Encyclopedia > Aphelion

  Article Content

Apoapsis

Redirected from Aphelion

Given two objects, A and B (two planets for example), if object B orbits around object A, apoapsis is the point in the orbit of B which is furthest (greatest distance) from A.

  • If object A is Earth, it's also known as apogee.
  • If object A is the Sun, it's also known as aphelion.
  • If object A is the Moon, it's also known as apolune.

According to Kepler's laws of planetary motion; as a planet travels in an elliptical orbit, around a star; as the planet approaches the periapsis, it will increase in velocity.

The point of closest approach is the periapsis.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Islip Terrace, New York

... alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 3.21 and the average family size is 3.51. In the town the population is spread out with 29.5% under ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 72.7 ms