Orbital speed ($v$)

Orbital speed is the magnitude of the velocity of an orbiting body in a specified reference frame. For a Newtonian circular orbit around a point source of mass $M$, equating $v^2/r$ to $GM/r^2$ gives $v=\sqrt{GM/r}$. In a curved spacetime, a speed inferred from coordinate radius and coordinate time generally differs from a speed measured by a local observer. For a circular orbit in the Schwarzschild metric, a static local observer measures $v_{\mathrm{local}}=r|d\varphi /dt|/\sqrt{1-2GM/(c^{2}r)}$; $r|d\varphi /dt|$ uses the clock normalization at infinity instead.