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A circular orbit is an ... (7.5% of the orbital period in a circular orbit) The fact that the formulas only differ by a constant factor is a priori clear ...
In astrodynamics, an orbit equation defines the path of orbiting body around central body relative to , without specifying position as a function of time.Under standard assumptions, a body moving under the influence of a force, directed to a central body, with a magnitude inversely proportional to the square of the distance (such as gravity), has an orbit that is a conic section (i.e. circular ...
All bounded orbits where the gravity of a central body dominates are elliptical in nature. A special case of this is the circular orbit, which is an ellipse of zero eccentricity. The formula for the velocity of a body in a circular orbit at distance r from the center of gravity of mass M can be derived as follows:
In Proposition 44, he derived a formula for the force, showing that it was an inverse-cube force, one that varies as the inverse cube of r. In Proposition 45 Newton extended his theorem to arbitrary central forces by assuming that the particle moved in nearly circular orbit.
A value of 0 is a circular orbit, values between 0 and 1 form an elliptic orbit, 1 is a parabolic escape orbit (or capture orbit), and greater than 1 is a hyperbola. The term derives its name from the parameters of conic sections, as every Kepler orbit is a conic section.
A circular orbit may be either stable or unstable. If it is unstable, a small perturbation could destabilize the orbit, but a stable orbit would return to equilibrium. To determine the stability of a circular orbit, determine the concavity of the effective potential.
Figure 1: Velocity v and acceleration a in uniform circular motion at angular rate ω; the speed is constant, but the velocity is always tangential to the orbit; the acceleration has constant magnitude, but always points toward the center of rotation.
Circular orbits smaller than 3 ⁄ 2 r s are not possible. For massless particles, a goes to infinity, implying that there is a circular orbit for photons at r inner = 3 ⁄ 2 r s. The sphere of this radius is sometimes known as the photon sphere.