Thursday, 16 May 2013

orbital elements - Name for 1-e and 1+e terms?

As the commenter states, $e$ is indeed called the orbital eccentricity. If you add a radial scale length (e.g., semi-major axis) to both of those values the $1-e$ describes the periapsis (closest approach of orbit) and the $1+e$ apoapsis (furthest) of an elliptical orbit. They don't have a specific special name, as they are dimensionless measures, but can be quite useful in determining the orbit of planets and other Keplerian systems.



Periapsis:
$$
r_{p}=a(1-e)
$$
Apoapsis:
$$
r_{a}=a(1+e)
$$



Perhaps the could be named the maximum radial eccentricity and minimum radial eccentricity, if you needed to describe these parameters in a report or class homework etc.

No comments:

Post a Comment