Auxiliary Circle
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Auxiliary Circle
In celestial mechanics, a circumscribing circle to an orbital
ellipse with a radius a, the
semimajor axis. The
auxiliary circle is related to the ellipse by
where e is the eccentricity; Q is any point on the ellipse; N is the foot of the perpendicular through Q to the line of apsides; and Q' is the intersection of the perpendicular and the auxiliary circle.
References
This article is based on NASA's Dictionary of Technical Terms for Aerospace Use