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Animations of the Solar System's inner planets orbiting. Each frame represents 2 days of motion. Animations of the Solar System's outer planets orbiting. This animation is 100 times faster than the inner planet animation. The planets and other large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earth's orbit, known as the ecliptic ...
Figure 10: Subharmonic orbits with k = 1 (blue), 1/2 (magenta) and 1/3 (green). An animation of the blue and green orbits is shown in Figure 5. Harmonic and subharmonic orbits are special types of such closed orbits. A closed trajectory is called a harmonic orbit if k is an integer, i.e., if n = 1 in the formula k = m/n.
An animation showing a low eccentricity orbit (near-circle, in red), and a high eccentricity orbit (ellipse, in purple). In celestial mechanics, an orbit (also known as orbital revolution) is the curved trajectory of an object [1] such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such ...
The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of the semi-major axis of its orbit. The elliptical orbits of planets were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars. From this, Kepler inferred that other bodies in the Solar System, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. The ...
Geosynchronous (and geostationary) orbits have a semi-major axis of 42,164 km (26,199 mi). [10] This works out to an altitude of 35,786 km (22,236 mi). Both complete one full orbit of Earth per sidereal day (relative to the stars, not the Sun). High Earth orbit: geocentric orbits above the altitude of geosynchronous orbit (35,786 km or 22,236 mi).
Assuming a circular orbit, this comes down to between 7 and 16 orbits per day, as doing less than 7 orbits would require an altitude above the maximum for a Sun-synchronous orbit, and doing more than 16 would require an orbit inside the Earth's atmosphere or surface. The resulting valid orbits are shown in the following table.
Orbits are elliptical, with the heavier body at one focus of the ellipse. A special case of this is a circular orbit (a circle is a special case of ellipse) with the planet at the center. A line drawn from the planet to the satellite sweeps out equal areas in equal times no matter which portion of the orbit is measured.
This image is an animated SVG file. The .png preview above created by RSVG for use in Wikimedia is not animated and may be incomplete or incorrect. To see the animation, open media:Comparison satellite navigation orbits.svg. It should run in any modern browser or viewer.