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Can the semi - major and semi - minor axes of an ellipse be time dependent? More specifically, can you have time dependent semi - major and semi - minor axes present in the standard form of the ellipse? I have an equation of the form [tex]\frac{(\xi ^{1}(t))^{2} }{a^{2}} + \frac{(\xi ^{2}(t))^{2}}{b^{2}} = 1 [/tex] where [itex]\xi ^{\alpha }[/itex] are components of a separation vector, [itex]a^{2} = [2 + \frac{1}{2}sin^{2}\omega t](\xi ^{1}(0))^{2}[/itex], and [itex]b^{2} = [2 + \frac{1}{2}sin^{2}\omega t](\xi ^{2}(0))^{2}[/itex] but I don't know if the standard form can actually have time dependent semi - major and minor axes.