Talk:Mean anomaly

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[edit] Mean Anomaly

Does anyone know the purpose of calculating the mean anomaly (e.g., for asteroid or comet orbits)? Does the calculation give us a better understanding of the shape of the orbit (i.e., more than just knowing the Periapsis and Apapsis and Semi-Major Axis alone)? Thanks---Tesseract501, March 24, 2006.

AFAIK it simplifies the Keplerian equation. See Keplerian problem. --CiaPan 17:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

It also makes numerical modelling of planetesimals, planets and the like easier since mean anomaly is a linear function of time. AstroMark 11:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)