AstroGrav Help /Sample Simulations /Exoplanet Systems /Tau CetiVersion 5.3

Tau Ceti

This simulation shows the Tau Ceti (HD 10700) planetary system, as detailed in the Wikipedia article at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti

If you set the simulation running, you can watch how it evolves, and see how the orbital elements of the five planets slowly change with the passage of time. The system has been set up on the assumption that the Earth lies in the orbital plane of the planets, so that the minimum possible masses for the planets have been chosen. The actual masses of the planets will be greater than this by a factor that is dependent on the angle between the orbital plane of the planets and a line from Tau Ceti (HD 10700) to the Earth. You can try editing the planets by multiplying each mass by a constant > 1 to see the effect of greater masses. You should find that for larger constants, the masses of the planets become large enough to make the system unstable.

Since different computers run at different speeds, you may need to edit the evolution time step to get the simulation to run at an acceptable rate.