A Small Variation of the Circular Hodograph Theorem and the Best Elliptical Trajectory of the Planets

TL;DR

This paper presents a variation of the circular hodograph theorem, demonstrating that elliptical planetary orbits can be transformed into constant-speed solutions in an appropriate inertial frame, and applies this to real planetary data.

Contribution

It introduces a new variation of the hodograph theorem and develops procedures to find the best elliptical fit for planetary trajectories using real data.

Findings

The best fitting ellipse for planetary orbits can be determined using a least squares approach.

Three candidate planes dividing the data points into octants are identified for optimal fit.

A detailed proof of the hodograph theorem is provided.

Abstract

A small variation of the circular shape of the hodograph theorem states that for every elliptical solution of the two-body problem, it is possible to find an appropriate inertial frame such that the speed of the bodies is constant. We use this result and data from the NASA JPL Horizon Web Interface to find the best fitting ellipse for the trajectory of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. The process requires us to find procedures to obtain the plane and ellipse that best fit a collection of points in space. We show that if we aim for the plane that minimizes the sum of the square distances from the given points to the unknown plane, we obtain three planes that appear to divide the set of points equally into octants, one of these being our desired plane of best fit. We provide a detailed proof of the hodograph theorem.