Barycenter illustration draft V 0.1

First pass at a visual explanation of how two bodes orbiting each other move around their shared center of mass.

The illustration shows two circles orbiting each other. Radio buttons on either side allow the user to change the mass of both and see how these changes effect their movement around the shared center of mass (shown as a red cross).

v0.1 Status:

• When the illustration loads, two circles representing orbiting bodies appear and start circling around their shared center of mass
• The two circles are distinguished by color.
• There is a set of radio buttons for each circle. These buttons allow the user to change the relative mass of the circles. Changing the mass alters the orbital pattern.
• The mass options are relative to each other. They don't represent any absolute values of mass. They range from 1x at the low end, up to 10,000x at the upper end
• the colored border of each mass selection areas matches the color of the circle it controls.

Next steps:

• The use of radio buttons with fixed mass values makes it easy to provide a good set of values for the illustration, but it is ugly. A slider would work and look better, but the slider would need to be designed in such a way as to indicate that the changes are a non-linear.
• The vague, relative nature of the units (ranging from 1x to 10,000x of some unknown initial mass) work as a way to illustration the general principle of to objects orbiting their shared center of mass, but it is not the most intuitive way to present this information. Consider coming up with another way to show units/values without drawing too much attention to that part of the illustration.
• No no effort has been made to include information about the Earth and Moon. Making the Earth and Moon options for the visualization would add a nice way to engage readers.