Characterizing Planetary Orbits and the Trajectories of Light

Abstract

Exact analytic expressions for planetary orbits and light trajectories in the Schwarzschild geometry are presented. A new parameter space is used to characterize all possible planetary orbits. Different regions in this parameter space can be associated with different characteristics of the orbits. The boundaries for these regions are clearly defined. Observational data can be directly associated with points in the regions. A possible extension of these considerations with an additional parameter for the case of Kerr geometry is briefly discussed.

49 pages total with 11 tables and 10 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Formalism for Testing Theories of Gravity Using Lensing by Compact Objects. I: Static, Spherically Symmetric Case
• A Periodic Table for Black Hole Orbits
• Light's Bending Angle due to Black Holes: From the Photon Sphere to Infinity
• Retro-MACHOs: Pi in the sky?

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Revisiting timelike and null geodesics in the Schwarzschild spacetime: general expressions in terms of Weierstrass elliptic functions
• Analytical time-like geodesics
• Almost automorphic solutions of discrete delayed neutral system
• A possible approach on optical analogues of gravitational attractors
• The effect of gravitational spin-orbit coupling on the circular photon orbit in the Schwarzschild geometry
• Black Hole Flyby