Encyclopedia > Apoapsis

  Article Content

Apoapsis

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
Dynabee

... it in her hand can accelerate the gyroscope to incredibly high revs by following a circular wrist motion with the device. Modern devices come with electronic rev counters ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 24 ms