Why do the moon orbit in an oval shape around the earth?
James P: Sorry but a satellite cannot have a circular orbit for other reasons. The answer is in the following. Imagine you are on a train travelling in a straight line. You are sitting on the right of the carriage facing forward: you have two tennis balls, one red the other green. You throw the green one at the opposite window. Can we now ‘freeze frame’ to see what has happened? The red ball has moved several yards up the track. The green ball has moved obliquely over the ground. We can picture an oblong with the red line up the right-hand side and a green line drawn from the bottom right-hand corner to the top left-hand corner. The green line is the longest, the green tennis ball having travelled faster to cover more ground in the same time. The Moon, ‘wanting’ to move in a straight line is held by the Earth’s gravity that makes it change course and increase its speed. Eventually the Moon is moving fast enough to pull away from the Earth. The situation has now changed with the Earth b
