page_title: Conic section
section_title: Standard forms in Cartesian coordinates
hierarchical_section_title: Conic section / Euclidean geometry / Standard forms in Cartesian coordinates
caption_attribution_description: English: Conic section - standard forms of a hyperbola
context_page_description: In mathematics, a conic section is a curve obtained as the intersection of the surface of a cone with a plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is a special case of the ellipse, though historically it was sometimes called a fourth type. The ancient Greek mathematicians studied conic sections, culminating around 200 BC with Apollonius of Perga's systematic work on their properties.
  The conic sections in the Euclidean plane have various distinguishing properties, many of which can be used as alternative definitions. One such property defines a non-circular conic to be the set of those points whose distances to some particular point, called a focus, and some particular line, called a directrix, are in a fixed ratio, called the eccentricity. The type of conic is determined by the value of the eccentricity. In analytic geometry, a conic may be defined as a plane algebraic curve of degree 2; that is, as the set of points whose coordinates satisfy a quadratic equation in two variables. This equation may be written in matrix form, and some geometric properties can be studied as algebraic conditions.
context_section_description: After introducing Cartesian coordinates, the focus-directrix property can be used to produce the equations satisfied by the points of the conic section. By means of a change of coordinates (rotation and translation of axes) these equations can be put into standard forms. For ellipses and hyperbolas a standard form has the x-axis as principal axis and the origin (0,0) as center. The vertices are (±a, 0) and the foci (±c, 0). Define b by the equations c² = a² − b² for an ellipse and c² = a² + b² for a hyperbola. For a circle, c = 0 so a² = b². For the parabola, the standard form has the focus on the x-axis at the point (a, 0) and the directrix the line with equation x = −a. In standard form the parabola will always pass through the origin. 
  For a  rectangular or equilateral hyperbola, one whose asymptotes are perpendicular, there is an alternative standard form in which the asymptotes are the coordinate axes and the line x = y is the principal axis. The foci then have coordinates (c, c) and (−c, −c).
  Circle: x² + y² = a²
  Ellipse:  +  = 1
  Parabola: y² = 4ax with a > 0
  Hyperbola:  −  = 1
  Rectangular hyperbola: xy = 
  The first four of these forms are symmetric about both the x-axis and y-axis (for the circle, ellipse and hyperbola), or about the x-axis only (for the parabola). The rectangular hyperbola, however, is instead symmetric about the lines y = x and y = −x.
  These standard forms can be written parametrically as,
  Circle: (a cos θ, a sin θ),
  Ellipse: (a cos θ, b sin θ),
  Parabola: (at², 2at),
  Hyperbola: (a sec θ, b tan θ) or (±a cosh u, b sinh u),
  Rectangular hyperbola:   where
caption: Standard forms of a hyperbola
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