[SPACE] Co-orbital Habitable Planets

[ericthered]

I would think the easiest co-orbital would be at the L4 and L5 of a Gas giant... IE, the "trojan" orbits. Sure, you're hurtling along in the same orbit as a number of asteroids, but thats a feature, not a bug.

Other configurations include orbiting each other: nothing says that two orbiting bodies can't be similarly sized.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I would think the easiest co-orbital would be at the L4 and L5 of a Gas giant... IE, the "trojan" orbits. Sure, you're hurtling along in the same orbit as a number of asteroids, but thats a feature, not a bug.

Other configurations include orbiting each other: nothing says that two orbiting bodies can't be similarly sized.

Pluto and Charon. Heck earth and our moon are almost a dual planet system.

[dataweaver]

Yeah; I've already done things with dual planets, planet-sized moons of a brown dwarf, and L4/L5 planets (in fact, I once tried cramming as many habitable planets as possible into a system by combining all three of these methods: dual planets at the L4/L5 points of a brown dwarf, which itself has a trio of roughly Earth-sized moons in 1:2:4 resonant orbits). I've also done planets in 1:2 resonant orbits at the extreme edges of the biozone, and even experimented with a 2:3 resonance — though from what I understand, the latter requires a high eccentricity on the part of one of the participants to be at all stable, which is likely to defeat the purpose.

In this case though, I'm specifically interested in the "dancing orbits" dynamic, as Anthony put it.