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Density waves - Elliptical orbits?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 6:40 am
by ikjoyce
I've been really enjoying playing around with Gravity Simulator, and have a question / suggestion.

One thing I have tried to create are density waves that might form a stable "spiral galaxy" structure - I have used circles with various offsets in x and y and that sort of works to create a single spiral of slightly more densely packed objects - but ideally what is needed is nested and offset elliptical orbits.

I am wondering if it would be possible to add 'eccentricity' and 'axis angle' elements to the circles / rings, where eccentricity would stretch the circle along an axis, and axis angle would indicate the angle at which that axis lies compared to the x-axis?
In that way it would be simple to create something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_w ... iagram.svg

Re: Density waves - Elliptical orbits?

Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 6:22 pm
by testtubegames
I think that should be possible, yes.

I can't speak to what the outcome would be exactly - from what I've read about spiral galaxies, the reason the arms exist is tied up in things like star formation, which we don't have in this sim. But I'd be interested to see what you get!

I'll let you know when there's an update with this in it.