File talk:Lagrange points2.svg

An object in free-fall would not necessarily trace out a contour
the description says in two places: "A contour plot of the effective potential of a two-body system. (the Sun and Earth here), showing the 5 Lagrange points. An object in free-fall would trace out a contour (such as the Moon, shown)."

This is entirely incorrect. There is no reason orbits will be restricted to an equipotential contour, the moon's orbit only traces it approximately neglecting the eccentricity of the orbit.

94.230.84.161 (talk) 18:05, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This message was correct, as anybody who ever saw anything fall on our home planet can attest. Apparently, the incorrect description has since been removed. ◅ Sebastian 18:09, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Take out the moon?
Including the moon may have had its purpose for NASA's original image, but it is misleading for an image illustrating Lagrange points, since the moon has nothing to do with the Lagrange points shown, and the earth-moon Lagrange points are not shown. Moreover, it's distance from earth is out of proportion: It's about 0.2 AU, instead of 0.002 AU. This is misleading since it suggests that L1 is about twice as far as the moon, when in fact it is five times as far. Removing the moon would also allow other benefits: Either we could better approach reality by showing L1 closer to the earth or we could further abstract the sun and the earth, so that the picture illustrates the general concept, independent of our particular situation. None of the articles that use this image profit from the inclusion of the moon (or the related out-of scale depiction of the objects); some, such as Radiation_astronomy/Entities, explicitly suffer from it. I therefore suggest taking it out. ◅ Sebastian 17:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

L3, L4 and L5 too far out
In this picture L3, L4 and L5 is depicted slightly outside the orbit of the Earth instead of at the same distance. This is wrong an very confusing. Liiiii (talk) 16:38, 1 May 2022 (UTC)