How to plot circles in polar form?

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Hannah Beezie
Hannah Beezie on 25 Mar 2022
Edited: Voss on 25 Mar 2022
I am attempting to plot the orbits of the planets in polar form using matricies holding the relevant values.
When attempting to use the polarplot() function, the resulting graph does not produce any circles/ellipses, only a few connected line segments.
What might I have done incorrectly in attempting to graph these orbits?
Please DO NOT suggest any changes that use a non-vectorized method.
My current code (reduced to only 4 planets for demonstration):
p = [.387 .723 1 1.524];
E = [.2056 .0068 .0167 .0934];
theta = deg2rad([7.005 3.3947 0 1.851]);
radius = p./(1.- (E.*cos(theta)));
polarplot(theta, radius);
  2 Comments
Voss
Voss on 25 Mar 2022
Edited: Voss on 25 Mar 2022
You've only got four points there, when you need four orbits, right?
I don't know enough about equations for elliptical orbits to know where your theta are supposed to fit in, but I know that you'll have to specify points all the way around the orbit:
p = [.387 .723 1 1.524];
E = [.2056 .0068 .0167 .0934];
% theta = deg2rad([7.005 3.3947 0 1.851]);
theta = linspace(0,2*pi,100).';
radius = p./(1 + (E.*cos(theta)));
polarplot(theta, radius,'LineWidth',2);
That gives you some orbits; maybe you can work with it to get what you're going for.
Hannah Beezie
Hannah Beezie on 25 Mar 2022
Thank you so much! That certainly looks more like the result I was aiming for.

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