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Richard Langley wrote:
"Nothing to do with the Earth's precession. The figure-of-eight occurs if the orbit inclination is not exactly zero degrees. It becomes more pronounced the higher the inclination."

Yes. In fact, the ground track of a geostationary satellite in a slightly elliptical orbit inclined 23.45° to the Earth's equator should look awfully familiar. It's identical to the Sun's analemma. And the "figure eight" shape has the same geometric origin. If the orbital eccentricity of a geostationary satellite is zero, the north and south lobes of the analemma are symmetrical. If the orbit has non-zero eccentricity, then one lobe will be larger than the other, much like the Sun's analemma.

-FER

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