eccentricity

… < 1 is called the eccentricity. Thus, e = 0 corresponds to a circle. If the Sun is at the focus S of the ellipse, the point P at which the planet is closest to the Sun is called the perihelion, and the most distant point in the orbit A…

…have cyclic frequencies: (1) the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit (i.e., its departure from a circular orbit), with a frequency of about 100,000 years, (2) the obliquity, or tilt, of Earth’s axis away from a vertical drawn to the plane of the planet’s orbit, with a frequency of 41,000 years, and…

The eccentricity of an elliptical orbit is a measure of the amount by which it deviates from a circle; it is found by dividing the distance between the focal points of the ellipse by the length of the major axis. To predict the position of the…

…defined in terms of its eccentricity. For a perfectly circular orbit, the eccentricity is 0; with increasing elongation of the orbit’s shape, the eccentricity increases toward a value of 1, the eccentricity of a parabola. Of the eight major planets, Venus and Neptune have the most circular orbits around the…

…it is also the most eccentric, or elongated planetary orbit. As a result of the elongated orbit, the Sun appears more than twice as bright in Mercury’s sky when the planet is closest to the Sun (at perihelion), at 46 million km (29 million miles), than when it is farthest…

Its orbital eccentricity of 0.0086 is the second lowest of the planets; only Venus’s orbit is more circular. Neptune’s rotation axis is tipped toward its orbital plane by 29.6°, somewhat larger than Earth’s 23.4°. As on Earth, the axial tilt gives rise to seasons on Neptune, and,…

It is more elongated, or eccentric, than any of the planetary orbits and more inclined (at 17.1°) to the ecliptic, the plane of Earth’s orbit, near which the orbits of most of the planets lie. In traveling its eccentric path around the Sun, Pluto varies in distance from 29.7 AU,…

…of moons can force orbital eccentricities to relatively large values, they are potentially important in the geologic evolution of the bodies concerned. Ordinarily, tidal interactions between Saturn and its nearer moons—the cyclic deformations in each body caused by the gravitational attraction of the other—tend to reduce the eccentricity of the…

…of the planets, Ptolemy combined eccentricity with an epicyclic model. In the Ptolemaic system each planet revolves uniformly along a circular path (epicycle), the centre of which revolves around Earth along a larger circular path (deferent). Because one half of an epicycle runs counter to the general motion of the…