Re:Another Interstellar Object Detected in the Solar System
by throwaway2048 on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @06:20PM
(#20945411)
Eccentricity is a measure of how elongated/oval shaped your orbit is, eccentricity of 0 means a circular orbit, 0.5 is "very elongated orbit" (that is coming relatively close to the sun, then going very far away, think deep space comets) 1 means a parabola escape trajectory, and anything higher than 1 means a very fast escape trajectory.
The fact its eccentricity is 3 means its going through the solar system extremely fast (relative to the orbits of other things at comparable distance), and is going to exit again after slingshotting around the sun, that means its origin is extremely likely to be extra-solar because we know of no real mechanism for a body to generate such extreme speed while originating from within the solar system.
In this image, red has an eccentricity of 0.7, green 1.0 and blue 1.7, the sun would be the focus. The the green and blue "orbits" never return, just like a parabola/hyperbola never curve into an ellipse, think of a graph like y=x^2.
The fact its eccentricity is 3 means its going through the solar system extremely fast (relative to the orbits of other things at comparable distance), and is going to exit again after slingshotting around the sun, that means its origin is extremely likely to be extra-solar because we know of no real mechanism for a body to generate such extreme speed while originating from within the solar system.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Kepler_o...
In this image, red has an eccentricity of 0.7, green 1.0 and blue 1.7, the sun would be the focus. The the green and blue "orbits" never return, just like a parabola/hyperbola never curve into an ellipse, think of a graph like y=x^2.