What is the path of a celestial body or an artificial satellite as it revolves around another body?

Answer 1

The orbit of a celestial body is its revolution about its primary. It can be explained in terms of the net result of gravitational forces acting upon the body, usually with emphasis upon the gravitational force exerted by its primary, which accelerates the body towards it, causing the object and its primary to revolve around a common center of gravity. The characteristics of the orbit are determined by the momentum of the body (kinetic energy or momentum being vector quantities, the vector's argument oriented approximately perpendicular to a line joining the body to its primary, or tangential to a circular orbit) and the strength of the force; the shape of the orbit is ideally elliptical with the primary occupying a position at one of the foci - remembering that a circle is a special ellipse with the foci superimposed. Note that with eccentric elliptical orbits, the axis of the ellipse itself will precess slowly over time, a phenomenon explained through relativistic effects. In the context of relativity, an orbit can be explained as a straight line (geodesic) through curved space shaped by gravitation - giving rise to one description of the properties of an orbit being the development (unfolding or mapping) in three dimensions of a four dimensional path through timespace.

Answer 2

The name of the path of a celestial body or artificial satellite around another body is called an orbit. Usually an orbit is shaped like an ellipse with the primary at one of the foci. Ideally an orbit could also be circular.