Sun Planets and Moons ID: 3591

STEREO Visits the Lagrange Points - L4 and L5

Visualizations by Tom Bridgman Released on April 9, 2009

The two STEREO spacecraft orbit the Sun in orbits slightly different from the Earth. STEREO A orbits between the Earth and the Sun, while STEREO-B orbits beyond the Earth and the Sun. As a result, relative to the Earth, STEREO-A appears to move ahead of the Earth, while STEREO-B falls behind the Earth, in their motion around the Sun.

In this configuration, the two spacecraft are now passing near the two stable Lagrange Points, L4 and L5, of the Earth-Sun system. The STEREO spacecraft are imaging these regions in the hopes of finding material that might have been left over from the original formation of the Solar System.

Revision Note: April 15, 2009:It was pointed out that L4 and L5 were reversed in the initial release of this visualization. These animations and stills were revised to reflect the corrections. We apologize for any inconvenience.

We start with a top-down view of the inner solar system. The Earth and its orbit are blue. The two STEREO spacecraft are green, and the environments of the Lagrange points, L4 and L5, are gray bands along the Earth's orbit. The actual deepest point in the gravitational potential is marked by the labels.

The camera transitions to a coordinate system moving with the Earth, keeping the Earth stationary in the field of view while the rest of the solar system spins around it.

Visualization Credits

Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Animator
Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC): Animator
Michael Kaiser (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Therese Kucera (NASA/GSFC): Scientist

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3591

Mission:
STEREO

Data Used:

STEREO

The STEREO mission consists of two Sun-observing spacecraft that will travel around the Sun on orbits slightly inside and slightly outside Earth's orbit.

https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov

view all stories where this data set is used