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tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 18,660

Re: GW Johnson Postings and @Exrocketman1 YouTube videos

This post may be of interest to a few NewMars members.

The link below points to an animation that GW Johnson was trying to explain with words and fixed drawings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLjnTgXXgXk

It turns out that I had made the same mistake made by millions of others in expecting that an ellipse that is the path of a planet would be skinny at the end near the Sun, and fat far from the Sun.  The proof of the equivalence of the shape at both ends is provided in the video.

The specific problem I was having is accepting that the ellipse that results from the cut of a cone by a plane delivers the same result regardless of the angle of eccentricity.

This video deserves a place as a reference for the book project.

(th)