Isn’t the 3 body problem (sun, Earth, Moon) very difficult to solve? How did humans predict future eclipses decades even centuries ago?
In: Planetary Science
Other than the handful of weird specific mathematical solutions to the three body problem, there are also two general solutions:
1. 3rd orbiting the center of mass of the two larger objects at great enough distance that the interplay between the two of them doesn’t throw the orbit off
2. 3rd object Orbiting close around the mid sized object as that one orbits around the larger one at a significantly greater distance
The moon (and most of earths satellites) fall under category 2, and thus their orbits are pretty easy to predict.
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