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I want to make a planetary system around a binary star system

Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:22 pm
by HikingStick
As if it's not obvious, I'm new to Gravity Simulator. My primary motivation is that of a science fiction/fantasy writer. I'm working on a world orbiting a binary star system. I've loaded the sim of our solar system, and the sim of a binary system. In our solar system model, I can see how things stay in place (with the sun being set to "ignore gravity"). In the binary model, setting either star to "ignore gravity results in them flying apart.

Adding any planets of significant mass also has an unwanted affect: it sets the binary pair in motion.

Has anyone managed to create a multi-planet binary system without the binary pair wandering across the screen?

Is there any way to anchor the center of a binary pair so that the pair is treated like a single entity with the ignore gravity feature enabled?

Once I get a planetary model in place, I hope to take what I learn and leverage it to multi-moon planets (including moons with moons).

On a related note, does anyone know of any software that lets you simulate sunrise/moonsrise as seen from a planet's surface, especially for multi-moon planets?

Re: I want to make a planetary system around a binary star system

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 8:16 pm
by testtubegames
Binary systems will be a bit tricky once you've got massive planets, too. As in, it's not uncommon for them to just break apart, at the scales we tend to work in for GSim.

But the issue of the wandering binary can actually be solved easily by just hitting the 'center' button, which is in the menu in the lower left-hand corner. That takes you to the frame of the center of momentum, effectively keeping the system stationary on the screen for you.