OK, More Math....
I'm trying to tighten up the prediction for the actual collision time.
Malenfant's math predicted the next collision down to the day but not the time.
I wanted to attempt to get the approximate time of the collision, so here goes.
I've been checking the distance to the B moon from the surface of the C moon every few days.
The distance displayed to the moon is not the actual distance to the surface, It's the distance to the center of the moon.
The radius of the B moon is 1,347 km or 0.004493108Ls. The C moon where I'm parked reads 1.11Mm away which is consistent with the moons radius of 1,108 km, but as you can see there's some rounding going on. Since the distance is rounded to two decimal places, I'll use 0.01Ls as the start of the event.
Since the approach is moving on a curve, I don't expect the aproach speed to be linear. I think at this point in the orbit, the approach speed should accelerate as the curve becomes more linear.
I don't know the math to take the curvature into account and I don't have an accurate way to measure the angles. Since the two are so close now, I'm hoping the curve will only have a negligible effect at this point.
On Sept 21 at ~03:48 game time the B moon was at 0.79Ls
Today, Oct 5 at ~02:30 game time the B moon is at 0.35Ls
That's ~14 days or more accurately 334 hours and a difference of 0.44Ls
If my math is right, that's ~0.03143Ls per day, or more accurately
0.001317Ls per hour
That's 258.09 hours until the B moon is 0.01Ls away, or 10.75 days from now, or October 15th.
258.09 hours past ~2:30am October 5th would be
October 15th at 20:35 GMT.
Actually, almost certainly,
sometime before that since the approach speed isn't linear and the measurements are all rounded to two decimal places.
So I don't actually know exactly when it will happen, I just know it will probably be
before that time.
I will of course try to update these calculations as they get closer.
At 0.001317Ls per hour, I think the moons will be within 1 radius of each other for about 3.4 hours.
If someone watching this thread has some better maths than I do, maybe they can improve on these calculations.
P.S. I make
the angle between the two moons to be ~29 degrees right now. (03:46am on Oct 5)
I measured the angle from a screenshot using GIMP, eyeballing the center of the planet and the moons, so give or take a half a degree.
At
~3.78 degrees every ~1.4 days or 2.7 degrees per day or 0.1125 degrees per hour.
That's 257.7 hours until 0 degrees. (Oct 15th at 21:28)
That's close to my previous number. The positioning of my ship for the screenshot and the measurement of the angle aren't particularly accurate though.
Anyway, it increases my confidence that the collision will be in the evening on Oct 15th (GMT/Game Time)