Sunday, 28 August 2011

orbit - What is exactly the "longitude of the perigee"

Perigee is the Earth-specific name for periapsis. People use longitude (which is a composite angle rather than an angle) because this solves the problems of circular and equatorial orbits.



The reason you need to use an epoch time to specify the Moon's argument of perigee and longitude of ascending node is because the Moon's orbit about the Earth precesses. Neither the argument of perigee nor the longitude of ascending node is constant. Instead, they are functions of time (and hence, so is longitude of perigee).



In the case of an inclined, non-circular orbit, "longitude" is the sum of the right ascension of the ascending node (which is measured on the fundamental plane of the reference system) and some angle (or angle-like measure such as mean anomaly) on the orbital plane. Thus longitude of periapsis (or longitude of perigee in the case of an object orbiting the Earth) is the sum of the object's right ascension of ascending node and it's argument of periapsis.



The use of "longitude" as orbital elements are for two reasons: To be able take advantage of Hamiltonian mechanics (this was done by Delaunay, resulting in the Delaunay orbital elements), and to address problems related to orbits with very small inclinations and/or very small eccentricities (this was done by Poincaré, resulting in the Poincaré orbital elements). Anomaly and longitude are synonymous in the case of an orbit with zero inclination.



While it is invalid to add two angles on different planes and treat the sum as if it were an angle, it is not necessarily invalid to treat that sum as what it is, a composite angle or dogleg angle, which is exactly what the Poincaré orbital elements do. ("Dogleg angles" aren't angles. Analogous terms include "dwarf planets", which aren't planets, and "red herrings", which oftentimes are neither red nor herrings.)

No comments:

Post a Comment