Re: Odyssey Orbit

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

I realise one enjoys baiting the language fanatics,
but, oh well, I gave everyone else the first shot...

1) the plural of periapsis is periapsides and similarly
 the most distant points of orbits are called the apoapsides.
2) a gnomon serves to tell the local time from the angle of
the Sun's shadow, while a mnemonic serves to recall a memorized
datum.  (To really stir up a word person, write "mneumonic".)
3) 'Phenomena' is a plural word.
4) Ap- is a famiy name modifier signifying relationship
('son of' in Welsh usage) but exceptionally, see aphelion.
5) Aristotle was in the habit of walking in the Lyceum while teaching,
lending the word 'peripatetic' to his philosophy.

Brian Whatcott

At 20:17 10/25/01 -0700, you wrote:
> I think peri (gee, helion, etc.) is the same prefix as in peripatetic.
> Whatever, it serves as a gnomonic for me.
>
> bc
>
>
> Hugh Haskell wrote:
> > > I wanted to get a handle on how elongated the orbit is. I found in one
> > > location a period of between 15 and 25 hours, but that it would be brought
> > > to under 20 hrs if it were over. The "peri-martian" altitude is about 250
> > > mi and speed is about 10,250 mph at that point. If the period is 20 hrs I
> > > can use Kepler's Third Law to find the average radius of orbit ( I hope).
> > > Here is the question: Can I take twice this radius to be the sum of
> > > "peri-martian" distance and the "ap-martian" distance? I measure these
> > > from the center of Mars. If so I get an eccentricity of about 0.8.
/snip/
> > Hugh Haskell