Equatorial coordinate system Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-13
An equatorial coordinate system labels a viewing direction on the celestial sphere by right ascension , increasing eastward around the reference celestial equator, and declination , increasing northward from that celestial equator. These two angles locate a direction, without specifying the object's Euclidean distance. In the traditional convention, zero right ascension points toward the reference equinox, the northward crossing of the Sun's annual path through the celestial equator. An hour circle through the direction supplies the north-south arc on which declination is measured. [ref].
For a concrete construction, choose Cartesian coordinates with pointing toward the reference equinox, toward the north reference celestial pole, and positive given by the cross product of the positive and directions. The direction's unit vector is
This is a spherical coordinate system with polar angle and no radial coordinate. The trigonometric functions require consistent angular units: convert right ascension in hours to radians before evaluating them. The synthetic direction , gives ; its squared norm is . A change of reference axes applies a rotation to this unit vector before recovering the two angles. Away from the celestial poles, recover right ascension using the quadrant-aware reduced modulo , and declination using ; a plain arctangent of loses the quadrant. Adding a common offset to every right ascension describes only the special case of a rotation about the same polar axis.
Figure 1.
Analytical geometry of right ascension, declination and the shrinking east-west arc toward a celestial pole
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The reference specification matters. For an equatorial coordinate system tied to the Earth, precession changes the reference celestial equator and reference equinox, and nutation distinguishes their mean and true versions. The date specifying those axes is distinct from the astronomical epoch at which a catalogue's source directions apply: advancing a star's proper motion and changing reference axes are separate operations. A modern catalogue may instead use fixed reference frame axes, aligned approximately with the traditional J2000.0 axes, without a moving reference equinox. Thus a pair of numbers labelled merely "J2000" does not settle every convention. State the reference frame, the astronomical epoch, and whether a direction is catalogued or apparent. [ref].
During one night's elementary fixed-direction approximation, a star's right ascension and declination remain constant while its altitude, azimuth and hour angle change because the Earth turns. In angular units, with the local sidereal time, west-positive hour angle obeys
At upper meridian transit, and the local sidereal time equals the transiting direction's right ascension. Pair apparent sidereal time with apparent right ascension referred to the true celestial equator and reference equinox of date; mean sidereal time refers to the mean reference equinox. Raw fixed-frame catalogue coordinates require conversion before precision pointing. [ref].
This separation makes the equatorial coordinate system useful: a catalogue can identify a target independently of the observer's current astronomical horizon, while local sidereal time tells the observer which hour circle is on the celestial meridian. Precision observations also account for proper motion, stellar parallax, aberration of light and atmospheric refraction; the fixed-direction construction above omits those effects. A reference-axis rotation preserves angles between directions, whereas changing the observer or correcting atmospheric refraction is a different operation. [ref].
Write , , and let be the radial profile of the radial derivative , which may be assumed to be a radial function here. The spherical coordinate system gives
Since , both and belong to the Lp space . It remains to identify the weak derivative of the radial profile directly.
For , each component of is a test function on . Sum the three defining weak derivative identities, using the stated divergence formula:
Given an arbitrary test function , choose . Dividing by gives , exactly the definition of the weak derivative. We have proved
This radial Sobolev profile on an annulus estimate follows from the two weighted integrals above and equivalence of the usual Sobolev norms.
In the standard spherical coordinate system, is measured from the positive axis. The radial unit vector in spherical coordinates is
The coordinate forms of the elliptic paraboloid are given in the labelled parts below.
For the other surface, converts to
For , this is a two-sheeted hyperboloid, with two disconnected sheets starting at and opening along the axis. For , it is a one-sheet hyperboloid:
Its waist is the circle , . Both are surfaces of revolution about the axis and approach the cone far from the origin.
The figure shows and ; scaling all coordinates by gives the other magnitudes.
Figure 1.
Two-sheeted and one-sheet hyperboloids for positive and negative values of a
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Assume a time-independent spherical relative potential , with acceleration . The relative energy and specific angular momentum are
Along an orbit, and , since a spherical gradient is radial. Thus both and are integrals of motion. Choose the escape level and take the bound galactic distribution function to vanish for .
For an isotropic , integrate over a spherical coordinate system in velocity space:
Differentiating gives . Convolve once more with the reciprocal-square-root kernel. Reversing the order of integration, under the usual integrability assumptions, uses
Therefore . Differentiating proves Eddington inversion:
Here is outside the square root, as in the original PDF; the TeX transcription wrongly places it inside. The assumptions include a locally integrable bound distribution and sufficient density regularity, with no extra unbound or boundary population. An inverted expression must additionally be nonnegative to be physical. Since the velocity measure and are invariant under all velocity rotations, whenever these moments exist; mixed moments vanish.
For the half-anisotropic distribution function, write the polar velocity angle from the radial direction as . Then , and
The apparent singularity is integrable because it cancels the factor in the velocity measure. Integrating and gives
The density relation requires at the escape boundary and for a physical distribution. Consider a monotonically decreasing . The largest allowed radius at fixed binding energy is the radial-orbit limit with ; a nonzero- orbit normally has a smaller apocenter because of its centrifugal term. Changing from to gives
The numerator in the original PDF instead uses . That is a genuine printed error: the chain rule for requires . It is not legitimate to prove the printed expression as written. A concrete counterexample is the unit-parameter Hernquist model at : , and . The printed quotient is , whereas the correct is . The former would give a negative distribution.
The angular weight after cancellation is uniform in , so the averages of and are both . The azimuthal angle splits the tangential term equally. Hence and each individual tangential moment is half the radial one. The velocity-anisotropy parameter is consequently
This is a radially biased constant-anisotropy distribution function, not an isotropic one or purely radial motion. It does not by itself prove dynamical stability; it preferentially weights small angular momentum while remaining integrable.
For the Hernquist model, use the Poisson equation for Newtonian gravity with the relative-potential sign, . Since ,
Its enclosed mass is , which tends to . Expressing the augmented density in the relative potential gives . The preceding derivative therefore gives
with zero bound-model population outside the allowed energy domain. It is nonnegative and reproduces the density by direct integration. The Hernquist model has a central density cusp, so the formulas for the local distribution are interpreted at . As a further check, the radial second moment obtained from the same integral is and each tangential second moment is , consistent with .
Write the angular dependence as , so . In the spherical coordinate system, and , with
Thus the integral in the torque-free rotation of a spherical squirmer has components
The vanishing follows from north-south cancellation, including the potentially relevant first azimuthal harmonics. In the direction, orthogonality of complex exponentials gives
Consequently every rotational component is determined:
This assumes an integrable prescribed angular function, with the Fourier series convergent sufficiently to justify the surface integrals; a finite Fourier sum is enough for the construction below. Other harmonics can generate exterior flows even though they contribute no net rotation.
For flow-free rotation of a spherical squirmer, choose and set every and every with to zero. Then , while the rigid-rotation velocity is
The total laboratory-frame boundary velocity is therefore zero everywhere. With fluid at rest at infinity, Uniqueness of Stokes flow gives
A constant pressure supplies zero resultant force and torque, so this is consistent with free motion. The imposed surface actuation counter-rotates relative to the material sphere; no claim is being made that ordinary no-slip rigid rotation produces zero flow.
In a spherical coordinate system,
Since ,
Differentiating the spherical coordinate system
gives the orthogonal decomposition
where
Thus the scale factors of orthogonal coordinates are
Since the total differential satisfies
comparison of coefficients gives the gradient
In the spherical coordinate system, and . Hence
Thus the static coordinates on anti-de Sitter spacetime have
which is positive for every .
The radial unit vector in the spherical coordinate system is
The coordinate tangent in the polar direction has length , so its corresponding unit vector is
Differentiating at fixed therefore gives
The factor is not : the corresponding scale factors of orthogonal coordinates occur in the derivative of the position vector, whereas the question differentiates its unit direction. The formula is understood away from the coordinate singularities where a complete spherical basis is not uniquely specified.
Substitute into the axisymmetric Laplace equation and multiply by . The radial and angular terms must be separate constants:
Thus
With , the angular equation becomes
Requiring boundedness on the entire polar interval, and using the supplied characterization of bounded Legendre polynomial solutions, gives and for . Trying gives , hence or .
The globally angular-regular separated modes and their superposition are therefore
Coefficients and convergence are determined by the radial domain and boundary data. A domain containing the origin excludes negative radial powers for a regular solution. If the angular domain excludes a polar axis of the spherical coordinate system and singular angular behavior is allowed, additional Legendre-function branches are possible; the displayed family is the one regular over the complete sphere, as intended by the hint.
For the nonrelativistic Coulomb Hamiltonian with reduced electron-proton mass , separation in Spherical coordinate system gives . The quantum numbers obey , and . These are joint eigenstates of energy, and , with the latter two eigenvalues and .
The Coulomb bound-state energies and characteristic length are
For example, is spherically symmetric and has no radial node. In general the radial part contains an exponential times a Generalized Laguerre polynomial, with radial nodes. The spherical harmonic specifies angular structure and azimuthal phase; real linear combinations of degenerate states give familiar directional orbitals.
The leading Coulomb energy depends on alone, giving spatial states for each principal shell, or including electron spin. Fine structure, Lamb shift and Hyperfine structure lift parts of this ideal degeneracy. An atomic orbital is a probability amplitude, not a classical planetary path.[ref]
Radial profile 2026-10-25
A radial profile is a one-variable function representing a radial function by . On an annulus , with , the spherical coordinate system identifies its Lp norm with the weighted profile norm through . Thus equality of two radial functions almost everywhere identifies their profiles almost everywhere in the ordinary one-dimensional sense.
Radial unit vector in spherical coordinates Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-18
At fixed angular coordinates, differentiating the Cartesian coordinates with respect to radial distance gives this unit vector. It is the local direction of increasing radius in the spherical coordinate system.
A right circular cone with vertex selects all directions within a half-opening angle of its axis. Here is measured from the axis to a boundary direction, so the full opening in a meridian plane is . For , interpret the selected directions as a spherical cap; for , this is a region larger than a hemisphere.
The spherical coordinate system gives the area element on the sphere. Dividing by and integrating over the cap yields
The factor matters: a thin angular strip near a pole contains fewer directions than an equally wide strip near the equator. Treating equal intervals of both spherical coordinates as equal solid angles would overcount the polar directions.
Figure 1.
One set of directions cuts similar spherical caps from spheres of different radii
. Original geometric construction with half-opening angle . Left: a meridian section of two concentric spheres; rotating each blue arc about the dotted axis gives its cap. Right: the corresponding patch on the unit sphere. The patch is curved, and its surface area, rather than the volume inside the cone, determines the solid angle. Details.
At , the solid angle is steradians, or about of all directions. At it is steradians, and at it is steradians. For a small measured in radians, the Taylor series gives the small-angle approximation . Doubling a narrow half-opening angle therefore approximately quadruples its coverage.