Talk:Orbital inclination

message: "An inclination greater than 90° and less than 180° is a retrograde orbit."
Unecessarily confusing. I was searching for what others deem as a retrograde orbit so I could make my computer code as accurate as possible, and found this website.
Bad choice to look at it! between 90-180° is a *northbound* trajectory that is retrograde, but there is also *southbound* retrograde orbit that... well, that's why I was searching for this; they have inclinations reported sometimes as 180-270°, but is that how its properly defined by the "space-people"? Maybe -90..-180? I don't know, and neither do you! Which renders your arcticle useless.
I might add, that this distinction is very important during actual rocket launches, otherwise your 12 million dollar payload gets hurled in the completely wrong direction (try it in Kerbal Space Program sometime :P).
:::  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.138.140.227 (talk) 10:50, 29 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: retrograde

message: Here is a tip for your article: I have just uploaded a neat and simple illustration to Wikimedia Commons that shows just the inclination. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Inclination_in_Elliptical_Orbit.png
Peo from Danish Wikipedia
I think that the illustration Peo links to is more helpful than the current illustration. The current illustration includes many parameters that are not discussed in this article (and shouldn't be discussed in this article). It might be confusing to someone new to this topic. How do other people feel about changing the image? J. Tyler 21:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture

message: I made a diagram to illustrate the questioned calculation, but I'm not sure it is done well enough for the article, so I put it here for now. -- Theoprakt (talk) 23:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calculation 

message: What is Inclination? An angle between the reference plane and the plane of the orbit (as it is stated in the article) or an angle between an orbit and the reference plane at a node (as it is shown on the picture)? These are not equal (if the orbit at the node is not perpendicular to the line of nodes). --Jonah.ru (talk) 11:50, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Took me a moment to realize you were refering to the diagram already in the article. Maybe I should put my little doodle in the article, it does not look half as good as the isometrical view already there, but I think it might help to illustrate the concept of inclination while avoiding the issue you named here. -- Theoprakt (talk) 10:28, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which angle? 

message: I have a question of which I can't find an answer: How often are the equatorial planes of Venus and Mercury aligned? Is this something which is known? It's needed in a physics competition where an additional non-Newtonian force is assumed between the planets on their plane of rotation. Thank you for you help.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.59.118.105 (talk) 09:49, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Planetary Equatorial Alignment 

message: : an inclination greater than −90° and less than 90° is a prograde orbit.
What's the difference between negative and positive inclination? —Tamfang (talk) 18:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The orientation of the orbit. Inclinations above 180° or below 0° are unnecessary, because such orbits can be characterized using a value of the inclination between 0° and 180° and a different value longitude of the ascending node. --JorisvS (talk) 21:52, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  So is there a difference or not?  Ideally I'd like to see a diagram showing two orbits, one inclined +n° and another inclined −n°, if the distinction is meaningful. —Tamfang (talk) 01:56, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Orbits with +n° and −n° are tilted in the other direction. However, if you turn of them around 180° in the plane, then these orbits are the same. This is what the longitude of the ascending node does. So, if you have an orbit with parameterized with inclination and longitude (i,Ω)=(−n°,k°), it can also be parameterized with (i,Ω)=(+n°,(k+180)°). The latter is what is done in practice. --JorisvS (talk) 18:52, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

text: Which is what is done anyway: only values between 0° and 180° are used. In principle, one could use higher and lower values, but this is unnecessary. Change it if you like. --JorisvS (talk) 10:11, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  ± 

message: In the article, it says a zero degree orbit is equatorial, while 180 degrees is retrograde equatorial orbit.  I'm almost positive that it means when an object orbits in the opposite direction of a zero degree orbit, but it is not made clear here.  Can I get a clarification or a fix to the sentence?  (Not that good at astronomy terms, I'm afraid, wouldn't want to screw things up by improper terminology)  Leobold111 (talk) 07:01, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: An inclination of 180° degrees is the same orbit as 0°, but in the opposite direction, which is what retrograde means. --JorisvS (talk) 09:03, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Told you I'm not good at the terms.  Leobold111 (talk) 19:31, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slight confusion 

message: Hello!  I have added to the Intro to ease in novices, in response to the request via template at the top of the article.  I've also rearranged Section 1.1 and fleshed it out.  That section includes the terms "apogee drift" and "critical inclination" which are not used elsewhere in Wikipedia, though they are presumably elaborated on in the citation (a .PS file).  I'd appreciate it if someone knowledgeable would add detail (maybe a single sentence) in Section 1.1.  Spike-from-NH (talk) 01:42, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There should be more info in Orbital perturbation analysis but the article is a clusterfuck. I might give a go at improving it later Spacepine (talk) 02:23, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Apogee drift 

message: Recently, trying to convert the orbital parameters of planets I searched for "Orbital inclination" in Wikipedia I found the table with the values of the planet inclinations (in "Observations and theories") calculated with respect to Ecliptic, Sun's equator and Invariable plane. However, references are shown only for the values calculated for the ecliptic and the invariable plane. Naturally one would expect references to the sun's equator as well. This really matters to me and I would be grateful if someone could show the origin (the reference) where to find how these values are calculated. CecoRogo (talk) 09:23, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  About the source of Inclination to Sun's equator data