Thursday, 17 May 2012

celestial mechanics - Roll, Pitch and Yaw of Orbital Planes

You're using the wrong terms. Engineers use yaw, pitch, and roll to describe the orientation of a vehicle. Some erroneously call these rotations Euler angles. Astronomers and physicists use true Euler angles, a rotation about the Z axis of some reference plane, followed by a second rotation about the once-rotated X axis, followed by a third rotation about the twice-rotated Z axis. Note that the Tait-Bryan angles (aka Cardano angles) use a sequence of rotations about three distinct axes. Euler angles use only two axes.



The first rotation is the planet's axial precession angle. The second rotation is the planet's axial tilt, or obliquity. The third rotation represents the planet's daily rotation. The rates at which the precession and obliquity change are much smaller than the quickly-changing third angle.

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