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Kepler's laws of planetary motion, which have been around for 400 years, say that a planet's path or orbit has the shape of an ellipse as a result of the Sun's inverse-square gravitational force.

The shape of an ellipse is measured by its eccentricity factor, which expresses how far each focus is from the centre (the Sun is always at one focus).

A circle is a special case of an ellipse with zero eccentricity.

The eight planets have orbits with low eccentricity, so the best way to draw a planetary orbit is to draw a circle with a pair of compasses.

Apart from Mercury, Mars has the most eccentric orbit, with eccentricity of 9%, which means that the minor axis of the ellpise is only 0.4% smaller than the major axis. The other six planets have less eccentricity and orbits which are even more nearly circular.

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