Lagrange 3

Celestial Being's hidden base at Lagrange 3, built into an asteroid

Lagrange 3 (or L₃) is one of the secret locations of Celestial Being. Within the asteroid field of L₃, Celestial Being has a hidden resource satellite for maintenance and re-supply. L₃ base was attacked by the A-Laws and subsequently destroyed in the battle; L₃ as a whole remains.

L₃ Location

The L₃ point lies on the line defined by the two large masses, beyond the larger of the two.

Example: L₃ in the Sun–Earth system exists on the opposite side of the Sun, a little outside the Earth's orbit but slightly closer to the Sun than the Earth is. (This apparent contradiction is because the Sun is also affected by the Earth's gravity, and so orbits around the two bodies' barycentre, which is however well inside the body of the Sun.) At the L₃ point, the combined pull of the Earth and Sun again causes the object to orbit with the same period as the Earth.

L₃ Highlights

The Sun–Earth L₃ point was a popular place to put a "Counter-Earth" in pulp science fiction and comic books — though of course, once space based observation was possible via satellites and probes, it was shown to hold no such object. Actually, the Sun–Earth L₃ is highly unstable, because the gravitational forces of the other planets outweigh that of the Earth (Venus, for example, comes within 0.3 AU of L₃ every 20 months).

Lagrange 3 in Gundam

Cosmic Era

Eurasian Federation's asteroid base Artemis at Lagrange 3

Lagrange 3 was the place where the space fortress Artemis was built by the Eurasian Federation.

External Links

• L₃ on Wikipedia