But what if we made a list?

I miss programming. It was the last thing I was good at. Which is not to claim any particular demonstrable level of skill or aptitude. But that one class I took in 2012 I worked hard at, and I got good grades for my hard work. I miss having something I could work at and feel I was making progress in understanding and skill. Unfortunately I keep being too occupied with work and school or otherwise insufficiently self-directed - as well as lacking in inspiration - to pursue further development in learning to program. Or rather, given the long gap of inactivity, re-learning to program.

As one might guess, today I did have some inspiration on a suitably scaled project I might undertake when I am able, and am writing this partially as a reminder to myself that I should do so. In this case I was wondering about where a stationary orbit around Ceres might be located and whether it would be stable.

I realised I could define a succession of more complex versions of the problem which I could automate the solving of. Simplest version would just take mass and rotation period for input and give an orbital radius as output. More complex versions could relate that to the Hill sphere of the synchronous-orbited body and identify whether the radius for a synchronous orbit falls within that range or whether it is outside (and therefore not stable). That would require additional inputs such as the ~planet's semi-major orbital axis and the mass of the star (or other parent body).

Then if getting that working, could add further complexity in trying to get a range of values computed, frex "as the orbited body's rotation is slowed, at what point does the radius of a synchronous orbit fall outside its Hill sphere?" or "at this rotation rate, how near to its parent body can this object orbit and still retain a synchronously orbiting satellite?"

Should be nice sort of project. Fairly simple, already solved problems (I could verify them with pen and paper), well-defined goals that are definitely outside my current skillset. I hope I will manage to get myself the time for working on this. Could feel proud of success.