The point at which the satellite is closest to the earth in an elliptical orbit is called the perigee. The point at which the satellite is furthest from the earth in an elliptical orbit is called the apogee.
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Go Ask a Question. Submit Cancel. What is an Elliptical Orbit? Can you answer this question? Editorial Team - everything RF Dec 2, Upvote Downvote Flag it Comments 0. More Calculators. What is a Geosynchronous Orbit? What is a Geostationary Orbit? What are Block Up Converters? What is a Notch Filter? What is the difference between a monopole and dipole antenna? What is the difference between a Diplexer and Duplexer? Quick Links. Popular Categories. Our Network. Use the electric orrery to view orbits of the planets in our Solar System.
An ellipse has 2 focus points or foci. At any point in its orbit, a planet's total distance from these 2 focus points stays the same. An ellipse also has 2 lines of symmetry.
The longer line is the major axis. The shorter line is the minor axis. Half of the major axis is the semi-major axis. Likewise, half of the minor axis is the semi-minor axis. Johannes Kepler wrote 3 laws to describe the motions of planets. Watch it now, Wondrium. You probably remember what an ellipse is.
A circle has a center and if you tie a string to the center and to a pencil, you can draw a circle. In contrast, an ellipse has 2 foci, which are 2 spots separated slightly from one another. If you take a string and tie it to both of the foci, you can draw the ellipse by kind of doing the same thing you did with the circle, and get a squashed circle. Learn more about the myths of orbital motion. Now, it turns out that the orbits of the planets are pretty circular.
But they are actually ellipses, and this was first worked out in the early s by Johannes Kepler. That honor is held by Aristarchus of Samos, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century B.
Given the lack of proper instrumentation, the debate over whether the Earth or Sun was the center of the universe continued over many centuries. In , Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published a mathematical treatise that promoted the idea of the Sun being the center of the solar system. But his treatment was complicated, and it was Kepler who used data to come up with the realization that the orbit of planets were ellipses.
In fact, Kepler came up with three laws. They are: 1 the orbit of a planet is an ellipse, with the Sun at one of the two foci; 2 the line connecting the planet and Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time and; 3 the square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. The semi-major axis is the distance from the center of the ellipse to the edge along the longest distance.
In a mathematical sense, the third law is the most interesting, as it allows astronomers to relate how long it takes for a planet to go once around the Sun to its distance from the Sun.
For instance, the closest the Earth gets to the Sun is 91 million miles or about million kilometers. When the Earth is at aphelion, it is nearly 95 million miles or about million kilometers from the Sun.
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