Debunked Myths

The ancient desire for cosmic perfection led astronomers to model planetary orbits as perfect circles for over a millennium. The Greeks considered circles the most divine and harmonious shape, and this ideal dominated astronomical thinking from Ptolemy to Copernicus. It seemed fitting that the heavens would operate with geometric perfection.

Then came Johannes Kepler in the early 17th century. Using the precise observational data of Tycho Brahe, Kepler made a revolutionary discovery: planets orbit in ellipses, not circles. Earth's orbit has an eccentricity of about 0.0167—very close to circular, but definitely an ellipse with the Sun at one focus.

This slight flattening means our distance from the Sun varies throughout the year. We're closest at perihelion (around January 3) and farthest at aphelion (around July 4). Interestingly, this variation doesn't cause our seasons—that's due to Earth's axial tilt. The shift from circular to elliptical orbits was monumental, moving science away from idealized perfection toward a universe governed by physical laws. Our planet's path is a graceful, slightly lopsided ellipse—a testament to the beautiful reality of our cosmos.