In these cases, would each star orbiter each other and the planet have an elliptical orbit around both them or would be other type of arrangements like the planet doing an eight shaped orbit between both stars?

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

At least intuitively it seems to me that 8-shaped paths would be extremely unlikely and unstable. Wikipedia describes two types of orbits:

So the planet can orbit both stars elliptically, or just one of them - but the latter can be the case only when the other star is a dwarf that can't affect the planet too much.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago

I assume that, just like with a circular orbit, it could be theoretically possible to have some crazy figure-8 orbit around two stars, but that orbit would be so unstable you will in practice never find it in the real world.

What I mean is you could probably design some crazy solution to the three-body problem that in principle remains periodic, but which will completely dissolve at even a slight perturbation.