Hide Ads About Ads. This occurs because of a critical point of the projection of the orbit into the ecliptic circle. For a differentiable function of several real variables a stationary point is a point on the surface of the graph where all its partial derivatives are zero.
For example to find the stationary points of one would take the derivative.
More generally in the context of functions of several real variables a stationary point that is not a local extremum is called a saddle point. A turning point is a type of stationary point see below. Math explained in easy language plus puzzles games quizzes worksheets and a forum. How to use the second derivative to decide whether a stationary point is a point of inflection a maximum turning point or a minimum turning point.