Talk:Orbit

Understanding Orbits Sections

In the Understanding Orbits section I've described a "range of" parabolic and hyperbolic orbits.

Is that accurate?

Or -- from a given firing height, with a given mass -- is there:

• only one possible parabolic orbit and a range of possible hyperbolic orbits, or,
• a range of possible parabolic orbits and only one possible hyperbolic orbit, or,
• only one possible parabolic orbit and one possible hyperbolic orbit?

Note both a parallel firing direction, and the "tilted cannon" discussed in the next Talk subject.

Link to polar hole explanation

I'd like to link from another article to an explanation of why many earth-observing satellites have "polar holes", areas near the poles where they cannot gather data (obviously not the ones in polar orbits). Can anyone point me to a good explanation of this, preferably in a Wikpedia article? HLHJ (talk) 04:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal 7 April 2020

Orbital shell (spaceflight) → Orbit – The article Orbital shell (spaceflight) fails WP:GNG to have its own standalone article. I think that the content in that article can easily be explained in the context of Orbit, and the "Orbit" article is of a reasonable size that the merging of "Orbital shell (spaceflight)" will not cause any problems as far as article size is concerned. --Soumyabrata ^{stay at home} _{wash your hands} ^{to protect from coronavirus} 12:33, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

The Orbit article wouldn't be the right destination. If you're going to merge it, it should be to Satellite constellation, or possibly just transwikified to Wiktionary, with the article reduced to a redirect. Mathglot (talk) 19:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Closing this proposal, given the uncontested objection. To discussed the new proposed target, see Talk:Satellite constellation#Merge proposal. Klbrain (talk) 17:12, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Dubious

I've tagged "The paths of all the star's satellites are elliptical orbits about that barycenter" becaues I think that's a bad approximation of what really happens with respect to the Earth's orbit. Since our orbit is much closer to the Sun that Jupiter is, it would be more accurate to just say the Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the barycenter of the solar system. See the first answer to [1], which seems like the correct explanation.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

It may be a bad approximation (I don’t think so), but either way it’s still correct to say that earth orbits the barycenter. Healpa12 (talk) 01:05, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Mistake in some use of the hat notation?

I've been away from physics for a while so forgive me if I'm completely wrong on this, do let me know, but in the Newtonian analysis of orbital motion section I'm seeing a repeated use of Ô that was confusing me and I realised it's because the article is using this notation for what's quite obviously a non-normalised vector. The hat notation is to represent unit vectors, no? Is this a mistake or am I just misunderstanding something here? CallumMScott (talk) 14:59, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Looks like the hat notation is used for unit vectors. Probably ${\hat {\mathbf {O} }}$ should be $\mathbf {O}$ . Let's see if there are any other comments before changing it. Constant314 (talk) 17:31, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I have never come across this use of the notation, and I don't see any purpose in including the hat. I considered asking the person who put it in the article, in 2014, but he hasn't edited for over two years, so there probably isn't any point in trying to do so. I have removed the hat, but if anyone knows of a good reason for including it then I hope they will explain that reason here. JBW (talk) 09:24, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Mozilla Orbit

Just FYI: This article here is linked as the "example" article to try article summarizing during onboarding of Mozillas new "Orbit" AI something. So it might get a lot of additional traffic https://orbitbymozilla.com/onboarding --Michael Sch. (talk) 09:23, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

"Orbiter" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Orbiter has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 March 17 § Orbiter until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 17:29, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Unsourced claim?

The article makes the following unsourced claim:

Newton showed that, for a pair of bodies, the orbits' sizes are in inverse proportion to their masses,

If this were true, then Jupiter should be the closest planet to the Sun. The orbit size is dependent on both the masses and their orbital period, so I'm unclear what it is trying to say. Any ideas? Praemonitus (talk) 17:50, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

For a fixed period, it might be sort of true, but it doesn't seem notable. Just delete it if you want to. Constant314 (talk) 18:39, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. I replaced it. Praemonitus (talk) 19:02, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Spring pendulum?

The 'Newtonian analysis of orbital motion' contained the following paragraph:

When a pendulum or an object attached to a spring swings in an ellipse, the inward acceleration/force is proportional to the distance $A=F/m=-kr.$ Due to the way vectors add, the component of the force in the ${\hat {\mathbf {x} }}$ or in the ${\hat {\mathbf {y} }}$ directions are also proportionate to the respective components of the distances, $r''_{x}=A_{x}=-kr_{x}$. Hence, the entire analysis can be done separately in these dimensions. This results in the harmonic parabolic equations $x=A\cos(t)$ and $y=B\sin(t)$ of the ellipse.

An elastic pendulum has a complex behavior and I'm not quite sure how you get it to swing in an ellipse. It seemed a little off topic for the section, but maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps a spherical pendulum was intended? Praemonitus (talk) 03:28, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Scaling in gravity

I don't see the benefit of this section. The scaling examples just seem like an application of basic math and don't provide much beneficial insight. Should we keep it? Praemonitus (talk) 15:39, 2 November 2025 (UTC)