Does the eccentricity of a planets orbit...

[plat]

Make it easier to detect the planet? like the more eccentricity the orbit has the more it will be easier to detect?

 

[plat]

Yeah, another planet orbiting another star.

 

[heyscottie]

Well, that's kind of the point! A more eccentric orbit will tend to give greater wobbles to the parent star, which gives greater doppler shifts for us to detect. This means that we could probably detect slightly lower mass planets in eccentric orbits than we could in circular orbits.<br /><br />Most important to detection, however, is the orbital period. Since we need to observe the star over a period of a couple of orbits, planets that orbit within a few days or weeks are a lot easier to find than those that have a longer period, like />10 years.

 

[heyscottie]

If you are correlating highly eccentric orbits with longer period orbits, which is at least semi-reasonable, then I can agree with you. Just so it is understood that given two orbits with equal periods, the more eccentric one will be slightly easier to detect.

 

[plat]

Yeah, it makes more sense that way