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orbital eccentricity
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parameter that determines the amount by which an orbit deviates from a perfect circle
Orbital eccentricity is a number that measures how much an object's orbit around another object differs from a perfect circle. It matters because it helps us understand and predict the paths of planets, moons, and other objects moving through space.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
~17 min read
Encyclopedic overview
An elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic Kepler orbit: Elliptic (eccentricity = 0.7) Parabolic (eccentricity = 1) Hyperbolic orbit (eccentricity = 1.3)
Elliptic orbit by eccentricity 0 · 0.2 · 0.4 · 0.6 · 0.8
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “orbital eccentricity” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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