“Acrete”

Mass is on a log scale. The 0-100% range maps on to 0.1 to 10 times the mass of the sun (50% = 1 solar mass).

Eccentricity for the planetesimals is from 0 (circular) to 100% (parabolic), via flavours of elliptical.

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This page contains JavaScript that emulates an early simulation of planetary system accretion (Computer Simulation of the Formation of Planetary Systems, Stephen H. Dole, Icarus, 13 494-509 (1970)), along with a few tweaks of mine to allow for different stellar masses, and to generate planetary parameters based on the rules of thumb from his RAND report, Habitable Planets for Man.

Terrestrial bodies are in cyan, gas giants in purple, and stellar mass bodies in yellow. Circles are sized to relative radius. Bars under the planets indicate apastron to periastron.

The script used, along with the slider control script used and this page, can be run offline (save as “Web page, Complete”) if you prefer.

Alternatively, there is a Java implementation available as a Jar file, containing source as well as the class files. The jar can be used as a free-standing java application, invoked by

java -cp acrete.jar acrete.Main