"Brett Aubrey"  wrote in message
news:cjfi43$2398$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> "TomHendricks474"  wrote in
message
> news:cjepv4$1rg4$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...

[snippage]

> > >Where are you getting this? At
> >
>http://brahms.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~rknop/classes/a250/fall20
02/pellish/tab
> > >le_of_distances.pdf
> > >it gives the following eccentricity values (other sites
roughly agree):
> > >  Planet      Eccentricity
> > >  Mercury      .21
> > >  Earth           .02
> > >  Neptune      .01
> > It's not so much their orbit is where the sun is. In
earth's it is in the
> > center
>
> I thought that was the same thing.  By an an orbit
eccentricity of .01,
> "Neptune's orbit, for example, is closer to circular than
Earth's" (.02)
> "and Mercury's is less so" (.21).  What do these values
mean, otherwise?

A very nice description of e for the generalized conic
section, with very neat diagrams, is given in:
 http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ConicSection.html
 ...tonyC
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