What is Elliptical Orbits of Planets

ELLIPTICAL ORBITS OF PLANETS

Why do planets have an elliptical, instead of a circular orbit? In a word, gravity. That the orbits of planets were elliptical (in the shape of an ellipse, or oval) was first proposed by Johannes Kepler in his the laws of planetary motion. It wasn't until Newton developed his law of universal gravitation, though, that we understood why. An elliptical orbit is the result of a complicated tug of war between the gravitational pull of different celestial bodies, like the sun and the planet. The bigger the celestial body, the more pull it exerts anomaller objects around it. One massive body, acting alone, might create a circular orbit. But if there's more than one massive object, as in our solar system, each rotating object will have an elliptical orbit.

In addition, the farther away from the sun a planet is, the

less it feels the sun's gravitational pull.

Some planets have a more complicated orbit than others, which was partially explained by Einstein, who later refined Newton's explanation, adding the effect of the curvature of space-time. An object, like the sun, has mass, and this mass essentially deforms space-time, causing it to curve. The work of Kepler, Newton, and Einstein helped us understand the complex mathematics involved in planetary orbits. And the orbit of a planet can change. All celestial bodies including the sun-are moving so, as the gravitational pull changes, the orbits change, becoming more or less elliptical in response to the changes in velocity and mass.