5.5 Orbits

In this section we will describe how to integrate individual stellar orbits, display and analyze them. Be aware that although 3D orbits can be computed the number of utilities to analyze them is rather limited.

Orbits are normally stored in datafile (see also orbit(5NEMO)), and a close conceptual relationship exists between a (single-particle type) snapshot and an orbit: an orbit is an ordered series of phase-space coordinates whereas a snapshot is a series of particles with no particular order, but all at the same time.

Since orbits will be computed in an analytical potential, we assume for the remainder of this section that you have familiarized yourself with how to supply potentials to orbit integrator programs. They all share the same triple ``potname=, potpars=, potfile='' keyword interface, as described in Section . Many examples of the tricky potpars= keyword are given in Appendix .