GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Detailed explanation-1: -In the Solar System, planets, asteroids, most comets and some pieces of space debris have approximately elliptical orbits around the Sun.

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: -The first reason has to do with the fact that the Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle, but is elliptical with the Sun being nearer one end of the ellipse. The speed of the Earth in this elliptical orbit varies from a minimum at the farthest distance to a maximum at the closest distance of the Earth to the Sun.

Detailed explanation-4: -Encyclopedic Entry Vocabulary. An orbit is a regular, repeating path that one object takes around another object or center of gravity. Orbiting objects, which are called satellites, include planets, moons, asteroids, and manmade devices. Objects orbit each other because of gravity.