Model Orbiting Around a Center Point

Introduction

In this blog, we will create a Python program to model several different orbits around a center point. We will use fake data to demonstrate how the orbits can be generated and plotted using Python libraries.

Required Libraries

We will be using the following libraries in our program:

  • numpy: for generating fake data

  • matplotlib: for plotting the orbits

Import the libraries needed

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

Generating Data

To generate data for the x and y coordinates of the orbits we will use the numpy package. In this example, we will generate data for 3 different orbits:

# Generate fake data for 3 different orbits
theta = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 1000)
orbit1_x = 5*np.cos(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))
orbit1_y = 5*np.sin(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))

orbit2_x = 8*np.cos(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))
orbit2_y = 8*np.sin(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))

orbit3_x = 11*np.cos(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))
orbit3_y = 11*np.sin(theta) + np.random.normal(0, 1, len(theta))

Plotting Orbits

We will plot each orbit using matplotlib. We will use different colors for each orbit to make them easier to distinguish.

# Plot orbits
plt.plot(orbit1_x, orbit1_y, color='blue', label='Orbit 1')
plt.plot(orbit2_x, orbit2_y, color='green', label='Orbit 2')
plt.plot(orbit3_x, orbit3_y, color='red', label='Orbit 3')

# Plot center point
plt.scatter(0, 0, color='black', s=100, marker='o', label='Center Point')

# Add legend and title
plt.legend()
plt.title('Orbits around a Center Point')

# Show plot
plt.show()

This program will generate a plot showing three different orbits of different radii around a center point. The orbits are randomly perturbed to add some noise to the data.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have demonstrated how to model several different orbits around a center point using Python and fake data. This program can be customized to generate orbits of different radii and noise levels depending on the particular case / scenario where this is to be deployed.

Daniel Korpon