STEREO Visits the Lagrange Points - L4 and L5

  • Released Thursday, April 9th, 2009
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:54PM
  • ID: 3591

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.

Opening with a view of the inner solar system, this movie shows the inner planets and the Earth along with STEREO-A and B as they pass near L4 and L5.

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.

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 moves down towards the plane of the ecliptic.

The camera moves down towards the plane of the ecliptic.

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.

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.

One last look...

One last look...

Credits

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

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

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.

Dataset can be found at: https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov

See more visualizations using this data set
SSCweb ephemerides (A.K.A. SSCweb)
Ephemeris NASA/GSFC Space Physics Data Facility 2008-11-01 to 2009-12-30

Satellite ephemerides

Dataset can be found at: http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov

See more visualizations using this data set

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