I haven't been able to get a clarification to a vexing question concerning Mercury's perihelion precession-al orbit, specifically the angular direction such observations manifests as. For example, hypothetically speaking here, let's pretend we have a space ship and have stationed it approximately 90 million miles distant from the sun. Also, our spaceship is not within the ecliptic plane but positioned at one of the Sun's poles. Mercury is observed to be orbiting around the sun in a clock-wise pattern. Under such a scenario what would the angular direction of Mercury's perihelion precession manifest as? I -suspect- the perihelion PRE-cession of Mercury's orbit implies that the phenomenon would manifest in a counter-clockwise direction, but I haven't been able to get a clear answer to that one.
Pardon my ignorance, on this matter. I'm wondering out loud, here: Does the term "PRE"cession mean: "in the opposite direction of..." as to the orbital direction? Mongo don't know. I actually have some legitimate curiosity in regards to this question. I have been running computer simulations based on the simple rules of celestial mechanics for several years now. My CM simulations pertaining to most of the ELLEPTICAL orbits I've plotted always show a distinct counter-rotational pattern, meaning the pattern of successive elliptical orbits that have been plotted are always in the opposite direction that the satellite body is orbiting around the central mass point. Just to be clear on this point, in no way am I attempting to imply that my simple CM simulations have anything directly to do with Einstein's General Relativity, which famously predicted Mercury's perihelion precession around the sun accurately. Can someone clarify my "pre"cession confusion? Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
