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Mercury's Perihelion Precession


	The precession in the orbit of the planet Mercury (about 43 seconds of arc per century) was correctly explained by Einstein's theory of gravity. This Demonstration exaggerates the effect by making the mass of the Sun around times greater; also, you can change an orbital parameter.


	Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny
	Show Initialization Code

The model is as follows:

is the perturbation parameter, and

where

is the universal constant of gravitation,

is the speed of light, and

is the mass of the Sun. Here

, where

is the angular momentum per unit mass

The perturbed solution invoking the substitution

where

is the eccentricity of the orbit;

The relativistic analogue of the orbit trajectory in the two-body problem is

Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny

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