Jeremy Emmett edited Orbital Eccentricity.md  over 9 years ago

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##Orbital Eccentricity  (Figure 4)  Neptune was initially placed on a circular orbit, with an eccentricity of 0. This was perturbed soon after, causing the planet to assume a more elliptical orbit. Over the course of the simulation, Neptune's orbit remains elliptical but the eccentricity seems to oscillate irregularly between values as low as 0.1 and values as high as 0.4. These large-scale oscillations in eccentricity span between 100 to 200 initial orbital periods. Small-scale variation occurs on time scales spanning only a few initial orbital periods, but they're no where near as substantial. On average, the eccentricity oscillates around ~0.2, but this average does appear to show a very slight increase over the course of the simulation.