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3D N-body orrery with chaotic ghost asteroids

What you are seeing: a miniature solar system rendered in 3D under a fourth-order symplectic integrator (Yoshida-4). One sun, five planets at small inclinations, and two ghost asteroids on the same orbit separated by a phase offset of one part in a million. Total energy stays bounded (symplectic invariant) but the asteroid separation grows exponentially (Hamiltonian chaos). Drag to orbit the camera

Figure 1. 3D orrery with two ghost asteroids that start on identical orbits and separate exponentially due to non-integrable N-body dynamics. Method: Yoshida-4 symplectic, Plummer-softened gravity, Canvas2D perspective projection with z-ordered draw.
time step Δt0.006
substeps/frame6
cameradrag to orbit
show ghosts

WHAT TO TRY

  • Vary each control and watch the rail readouts respond.
  • Compare the diagnostic plot against the live scene.