Mean Anomaly
The product of an orbiting body's mean motion and time past perihelion passage.
Mean Anomaly The anomaly which would exist if a planet orbited at a uniform speed in a circular orbit.
Mean Solar Time Time based on an imaginary "mean Sun". See the tutorial on Time.
Mean Anomaly
In undisturbed elliptic motion, the product of the mean motion of an orbiting body and the interval of time since the body passed pericenter.
Mean anomaly An angle used in calculating orbital motion obeying Kepler's laws, increasing by 360 degrees each orbit.
mean anomaly (NASA SP-7, 1965) See anomaly. mean center of moon (NASA SP-7, 1965) A central point for a lunar coordinate system; ...
The mean anomaly is what the true anomaly would be if the object orbited in a perfect circle at constant speed.
In elliptic motion the true anomaly minus the mean anomaly. It is the difference between the actual angular position in the elliptic orbit and the position the body would have if its angular motion were uniform. [S92]
Equation Equinoxes ...
Kepler's Problem, namely, that of finding the co-ordinates of a planet at a given time, which is equivalent - given the mean anomaly - to that of determining the true anomaly, was solved approximately by Kepler, and more completely by Wallis, ...
Orbital elements defining the position and speed of a planet in its orbit are orbital velocity (v), mean anomaly (M), and mean daily motion (d).
For nearly circular orbits it turns out that the true anomaly, the eccentric anomaly, and the mean anomaly (t) are all approximately equal to each other. I apologize for this archaic nomenclature, but physics is stuck with these names.
Inclination ()
Longitude of the ascending node ()
Argument of periapsis ()
Eccentricity ()
Semimajor axis ()
Mean anomaly at epoch () ...
The six orbital elements used for comets are usually the following: time of perihelion passage (T) [sometimes taken instead as an angular measure called "mean anomaly", M]; perihelion distance (q), usually given in AU; eccentricity (e) of the orbit; ...
 See also: Orbit, Anomaly, Distance, Planet, Element
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