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What is Eccentricity?

April 26, 2017eccentricity

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What is Eccentricity?

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Orbital eccentricity is a very important measure of how elliptical the path is that is followed by an orbiting body. Everything that orbits around another body follows a path that is a conic section. Very few orbits are perfectly circular. Almost all orbits are elliptical to one extent or another. Ellipses are conic sections. Mercury is currently the planet with the most eccentric orbit around the sun. The Wikipedia link below contains a link giving the eccentricities of all the planets in our solar system.