If you look at the trend in orbital energies as you go across a period the pattern is clear (orbital energy decreases with increasing effective nuclear charge) and, to my knowledge, it has no anomalies like the trend in ionization energies does when a 2p orbital is filled for the first time with two electrons (when this happens the ionization energy decreases). I expected that the graphs for ionization energy would be mirror images in the x-axis given that orbital energies are negative and measured relative to an ionized electron (which equals 0) albeit with different y-scales because ionization energy is the energy to ionize a mole of a substance in a gaseous state. Is my understanding that orbital energy = -(energy required to remove one electron from that shell) incorrect? Fundamentally, the question is, why doesn't the trend in orbital energies mirror the trend in ionization energies?
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