Elliptical orbit

High school (ages 12+)
Space & Astronomy

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/elliptical-orbit

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the orbital path type?Elliptical orbits are conic sections described by Kepler's first law
2. What is the discoverer of physical basis?Isaac Newton, through his law of universal gravitation
3. Why did people think planets moved in circles before Kepler?Before Kepler, many believed circles were perfect and divine, so they thought planets moved in circles. But observations of Mars by Tycho Brahe showed the circles didn't match reality.
4. How can we tell how stretched out an ellipse is?The eccentricity tells us how stretched an ellipse is. If e equals 0 the shape is a perfect circle; if e is between 0 and 1 it is an ellipse.

Eccentricity: A measure of how much an orbit deviates from being a perfect circle.
Vis-viva Equation: An equation relating orbital speed to distance from the central body and orbital parameters.
Conic Section: A curve formed by the intersection of a plane and a double cone (e.g., circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola).