Find the geometric locus of the intersecting lines connecting the endpoints of two chords.

circleseuclidean-geometrygeometric-constructiongeometrylocus

The problem is from Kiselev's Geometry Book I. Exercise 594:

Find the geometric locus of the points of intersection of two chords
$AC$ and $BD$ of a given circle, where $AB$ is a fixed chord of this
circle, and $CD$ is any chord of a fixed length.

enter image description here

My initial guess was that maybe the angle $AEB$ is fixed so that the point $E$ will be on a circle, but it was easy to show that it is not the case. Another attempt was to put $BD$ as a diameter as in the picture and to make use of many theorems regarding this configuration (mainly using the fact that the angle $BAD$ and $BCD$ are right), but I could not derive any useful fact from it. There is this another thing to consider that $CD$ can be located in the left to $AB$ in the picture.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

Since angles $\angle CAD$ and $\angle ADB$ are fixed (why) we see that $\angle AED$ is fixed and thus also $\angle AEB$ is fixed.

Since $AB$ is fixed it means that $E$ describes arch $AB$ on a fixed circle $ABE$.