Mercury's orbit is rather eccentric, its perigee brings it much nearer to the sun than its apogee. Venus by contrast has practically a circular orbit. When Mercury is approaching apogee, it can get close to venus if it is in the similar part of its orbit. At this point, Mercury's precession...
but if the scope is 500,000 kilometers north of this point(on the L2 orbit) it is no longer in the plane. What is the relationship of the gravity force to the centrifugal force then?
When the Webb is at a point on its L2 orbit, (not at L2), what direction is the centrifugal force vector compared to the direction of the combined earth-sun gravity vector on the opposite side? Is the direction of this centrifugal vector ALWAYS parallel to the sun-earth plane? or is it always...
Lifelong lover of astronomy. I'm a deep sky object observer. I use a 12.5" dob, and love taking it out to a dark site. 300+ Herschel-400 oblects logged, all by starhopping.