# Solar Wind and Orbits

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 12, 2015, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859 "2015-05-12T15:01:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859/1 "2015-05-12T15:01:07Z")

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Does the solar wind ever affect the orbits of planets or other bodies? I know it has an effect on the magneto-spheres and atmospheres of planets resulting in the Auroras. But does the constant, slight pressure of the wind ever alter their trajectories in any way?

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**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859/2 "2015-05-12T15:04:41Z")

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It’s not going to be a significant effect on anything much bigger than a grain of dust.

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**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2015, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859/3 "2015-05-12T17:01:39Z")

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If Wikipedia is to be believed, the pressure exerted by the solar on an object at 1 AU (i.e., the same distance from the Sun as the Earth) is a few billionths of a pascal. This is about the weight of a (fine) grain of sand for every square meter of surface, and atmospheric pressure is about a hundred trillion times stronger. As another comparison, the light from the Sun exerts a pressure on you that’s about a thousand times stronger.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [May 13, 2015, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/solar-wind-and-orbits/719859/4 "2015-05-13T20:44:14Z")

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Even if you do have an object small and light enough for solar pressure to be significant, it falls off as 1/r^2, just like gravity, so the object would still be in a Keplerian orbit. It’d just be a Keplerian orbit with a slightly lower effective mass of the Sun.

Oh, and the light pressure from the Sun is actually considerably greater than the pressure from the wind.