EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Earth’s orbit is an ellipse with the Earth-Sun barycenter as one focus and a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).

Detailed explanation-2: -Orbits are eliptical because of Newtons Law of Gravity (bodies attract each other in proportion to their mass and inversly proportional to the square of the distance between them). All worked out by Kepler some years ago. A circular orbit is a special (and very unlikely) case of an eliptical orbit.

Detailed explanation-3: -All orbits are elliptical, which means they are an ellipse, similar to an oval.

Detailed explanation-4: -Johannes Kepler was the first to use data to work out that the orbits of planets are elliptical and not circular.

Detailed explanation-5: -Earth’s orbit has an eccentricity of 0.0167, which is very close to 0. This is why it’s easy to mistake it for a perfect circle. Mercury, with an eccentricity of 0.2056, is the planet with the most elliptical orbit. Use the electric orrery to view orbits of the planets in our Solar System.