What exactly is an ellipse?
Yes, an ellipse is something like a slightly flattened circle, meaning it is not a perfect circle, but is longer in one direction than the other. And, yes, the Sun is closer to one end of our elliptical orbit than to the other. The closer end is called perihelion (91.5 million miles) and the further, aphelion (94.5 million miles). The same is true of the Moon’s orbit around Earth. In this case, they are called perigee and apogee.
