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An ellipse (red) obtained as the intersection of a cone with an inclined plane. Ellipse: notations Ellipses: examples with increasing eccentricity. In mathematics, an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of the two distances to the focal points is a constant.
An ellipse is defined by two axes: the major axis (the longest diameter) of length and the minor axis (the shortest diameter) of length , where the quantities and are the lengths of the semi-major and semi-minor axes respectively.
The semi-minor axis of an ellipse runs from the center of the ellipse (a point halfway between and on the line running between the foci) to the edge of the ellipse. The semi-minor axis is half of the minor axis. The minor axis is the longest line segment perpendicular to the major axis that connects two points on the ellipse's edge.
The eccentricity of an ellipse is strictly less than 1. When circles (which have eccentricity 0) are counted as ellipses, the eccentricity of an ellipse is greater than or equal to 0; if circles are given a special category and are excluded from the category of ellipses, then the eccentricity of an ellipse is strictly greater than 0.
The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci. Kepler's first law placing the Sun at one of the foci of an elliptical orbit Heliocentric coordinate system (r, θ) for ellipse. Also shown are: semi-major axis a, semi-minor axis b and semi-latus rectum p; center of ellipse and its two foci marked by
Any fixed polarization can be described in terms of the shape and orientation of the polarization ellipse, which is defined by two parameters: axial ratio AR and tilt angle . The axial ratio is the ratio of the lengths of the major and minor axes of the ellipse, and is always greater than or equal to one.
Although the eccentricity is 1, this is not a parabolic orbit. Most properties and formulas of elliptic orbits apply. However, the orbit cannot be closed. It is an open orbit corresponding to the part of the degenerate ellipse from the moment the bodies touch each other and move away from each other until they touch each other again.
where E is the total orbital energy, L is the angular momentum, m rdc is the reduced mass, and the coefficient of the inverse-square law central force such as in the theory of gravity or electrostatics in classical physics: = (is negative for an attractive force, positive for a repulsive one; related to the Kepler problem)