Direct numerical integration and linear superposition of gravitational potentials are proposed as high-accuracy ways to compute surface gravity near irregular bodies, avoiding spherical-harmonic divergence inside the Brillouin sphere.
The gravitational field of a cube
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abstract
Large astronomical objects such as stars or planets, produce approximately spherical shapes due to the large gravitational forces, and if the object is rotating rapidly, it becomes an oblate spheroid. In juxtaposition to this, we conduct a thought experiment regarding the properties of a planet being in the form of a perfect cube. We firstly calculate the gravitational potential and from the equipotentials, we deduce the shape of the lakes that would form on the surface of such an object. We then consider the formation of orbits around such objects both with a static and a rotating cube. A possible practical application of these results is that, because cuboid objects can be easily stacked together, we can calculate the field of more complicated shapes, using the principle of superposition, by simply adding the field from a set of component shapes.
fields
astro-ph.EP 1years
2024 1verdicts
CONDITIONAL 1representative citing papers
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SURF Report: High Accuracy Methods for Computing Gravitational Potential and Gravitational Force Fields Near the Surface of Irregularly Shaped 3-Dimensional Bodies
Direct numerical integration and linear superposition of gravitational potentials are proposed as high-accuracy ways to compute surface gravity near irregular bodies, avoiding spherical-harmonic divergence inside the Brillouin sphere.