Main content
Course: AP®︎/College Computer Science Principles > Unit 6
Lesson 1: Exploring simulationsSimulations in astronomy
Astronomers study the universe and its vast array of celestial objects, such as planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and comets.
The closest celestial object - the moon - is still 238,900 miles away from astronomers here on Earth. The farthest object - a galaxy - is more than 12 billion light years away.
When astronomers want to understand the workings of space, they often use simulations that they can run from the comfort of their own planet.
Educational simulations
Let's explore simulations from the Khan Academy NASA content. Since the primary goal of these simulations is learning, they are simpler than the ones used by actual astronomers but still similar in topic.
This first simulation predicts a lunar eclipse based on the moon's position, incline, and rotation:
The next simulation shows the predicted results from launching a satellite to Mars on different dates of the year. NASA engineers used simulations like this to come up with launch dates for their satellites.
NASA engineers also need to figure out how to land objects onto planets. This simulation shows how tricky it is to successfully land a rover on Mars:
Research simulations
Cosmologists are now using computational simulations to understand the history of the entire universe and predict its future, all the way from the Big Bang to its eventual end, billions of years from now. Those simulations can test out different theories to see which simulations create universes that are the most like our own.
IllustrisTNG is a research project that simulates galaxy formation by modeling factors like gravitational attraction, magnetic fields, the flow of gases, and the presence of dark matter.
This video from IllustrisTNG simulates the formation of a galaxy very similar to our Milky Way galaxy:
If a simulation can successfully output a galaxy that behaves like the Milky Way, then it may one day be able to predict the fate of our galaxy billions of years in the future.
🙋🏽🙋🏻♀️🙋🏿♂️Do you have any questions about this topic? We'd love to answer—just ask in the questions area below!
Want to join the conversation?
- Anyone else spend way too much time figuring something out?
Angle: 5 deg
SUFR: 4125 m/s
Chute:6:40
HS:6:54
Bshell: 1600m
Freefall:0:02
Const Vel: 150m
Skycrane: 80m(31 votes)- How long it takes for you to fig. it out?(3 votes)
- who else tried so hard to do the
mission to mars(11 votes)- Me too hehe, i got 12kg fuel left at the end, clutch :D(1 vote)
- Did anyone notice that in the simulation of Mars and Earth, when you change the year one by one, Earth stays the same (duh) but Mars flipped around on its orbit?(5 votes)
- I takes a year(In this, it means the time for Earth to orbit once, not 364.2163...) for the Earth to orbit, so it is the same!(3 votes)
- April 26th, 2016(4 votes)
- 31 july 2014 mine landed(2 votes)
- 3 jan 2019 I landed in the second sim(2 votes)
- 10 jan 2014 launch it(2 votes)
- did the astronuts explore outside the galaxies?(1 vote)
- The first sim. always report a error:
%(typeMessage)s Perhaps you have a mistake in your code?(1 vote)- It works for me. Perhaps you should try using a different internet browser.(1 vote)
- How can you program for variables that are not completely understood?(1 vote)