Degenerate Ellipse With Semiminor Axis of Zero
Another type of degeneration occurs when an ellipse, rotated and translated to its simplest form, has its semiminor axis b go to zero and thus has its eccentricity go to one. The result is a line segment (degenerate because the ellipse is not differentiable at the endpoints) with its foci at the endpoints. As an orbit, this is a radial elliptic trajectory.
Read more about this topic: Degenerate Conic
Famous quotes containing the words degenerate, ellipse and/or axis:
“He was ... a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and Ill show you a loser, show me a hero and Ill show you a corpse.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)
“The ellipse is as aimless as that,
Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
In our present. Its flexing is its account,
Return to the point of no return.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;
He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature;
And his mind is the sky,
Than all it holds more deep, more high.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)