Timeline for Nuances of the terms (mean / osculating / Keplerian / orbital) elements
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
4 events
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| Mar 6, 2021 at 23:38 | comment | added | Puffin | +1, good description. However, strictly, there are always residuals to any orbit determination effort so even the best osculating elements will still be a mean of the points - just on a much smaller scale than the "mean elements" in your diagram. (e.g imagine the osculating curve goes through the central three points very well, but deviates outside of that) | |
| Mar 4, 2021 at 23:07 | comment | added | uhoh | for the latter cf. The Random Walk of Cars and Their Collision Probabilities with Planets (arXiv)) cited in Ars Technica's Starman is out there, but we probably won’t see him again until 2047 cited here and here. | |
| Mar 4, 2021 at 22:53 | comment | added | uhoh | Great answer! Some astronomers do indeed use mean elements and their secular changes when doing some types of long term propagation/evolution i.e. millions or billions of years (cf. Gallardo 2017 as discussed in this answer). Others of course do use straight n-body numerical integration. | |
| Mar 4, 2021 at 17:33 | history | answered | Brandon Rhodes | CC BY-SA 4.0 |