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the_fungible_man t1_irxqbeu wrote

Speaking generally, yes. Consider just the three body system of the Sun, Didymos, and Dimorphos. Despite the huge difference in their masses, Didy and Dimo revolve about their mutual barycenter – like the Earth and Moon, or Pluto and Charon, or even the Sun and the planets. This barycenter follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun.

Perturbing Dimo's orbit, by changing its mass, and its average distance from and period around Didy also changed the barycenter of the system. Therefore the impact on Dimorphos did change the heliocentric orbit of the Didy-Dimo pair. But in the real multi-body universe, the extent of this change is infinitesimally tiny compared to all the other forces constantly tugging on the Didy-Dimo system.

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[deleted] t1_irxpfv5 wrote

Undoubtedly yes, but that's MUCH more difficult to measure.

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InformalPenguinz t1_irxp3ir wrote

Gravity pulls on each other, just because it has a smaller amount of gravity doesn't mean it doesn't affect it. The moon moves our tides so knocking the trajectory of one would probably affect the other.

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AdoltTwittler t1_irxvgpr wrote

My understanding is the only measurable effect on the pair is Dimorphos's orbit around Didymos is slightly changed (well really they are both moving around the center of mass but I don't know where that is). I don't think their orbit around the sun has changed.

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frustrated_staff t1_irxn4xb wrote

We aren't even sure that the orbit of Dimorphos has changed, yet (observationally). We won't know if Didymos' orbit has changed until we can assess the impact on Dimorphos, but all of our theories say that both orbits should be different now.

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SpartanJack17 t1_irygkwa wrote

Hello u/fromthewhalesbelly, your submission "Question: has Didymos's orbit around the Sun also changed?" has been removed from r/space because:

  • Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

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