OT Question for Astronomers

[henk brouwer]

Originally posted by Loser:
Just some highly fictional reference material.

But does anyone have the answer?

A little animated model of the Solar System would really be ideal... but any dependable answer would be very appreciated.

A site with some more information.

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/TritonWatch/background.html

the science overview section seems to suggest that you can neither add or substract the values, and that it is more complicated. it seems that triton's orbit precesses, which causes it to have seasonal fluctuations of about 688 years. A quote from http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/neptglos.html:

Major summer—Triton's seasonal cycle is extremely complex due to the peculiarities of its orbital geometry. Its seasons are modulated by the period of its motion around Neptune (14 days), the precession of its orbit (688 years), and Neptune's rotation around the Sun (165 years). The net result is that Triton experiences a series of major and minor seasons as the amplitude of its seasonal cycle is driven by these various modulations.

I'm not sure how accurate that information is since they seem to have the period of Tritons orbital motion wrong by quite a few days..

Things like this make my head hurt .

[ October 29, 2003, 09:10: Message edited by: henk brouwer ]