Question

What is the shape of the orbit of planets and moons?

Answer 1

Kepler's 1st law of planetary motion: all planets move in ellipses. That applies to everything else too if it moves in a closed orbit. It's just what you get when the motion is controlled by gravity.

In the case of the major planets, the eccentricity is very small and the ellipse is almost a circle. Comets in closed orbits are at the other end of the scale and move in very eccentric ellipses.

Then there are comets that come in towards the Sun and move in a parabola or hyperbola - an open-ended curve - so from Earth we see them once and will never see them again.

Answer 2

thanks besti!! <3