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It was Johannes Kepler at the start of the 17th century. He studied new observations done by Tycho Brahe and after many months doing calculations from the measurements of the path of Mars he concluded that an ellipse was the best way to describe the orbit because it gives predictions that are the closest to the real thing.

Why did it take so long when they had been studying this for 1500 years? it was because the previous model, based on circles and epicycles, gave results that were accurate enough until Tycho Brahe's more accurate observations showed that something was not quite right.

Luckily for Kepler, the orbit of Mars has more eccentricity than the other major planets and this was the right orbit to study if he was going to reach a result.

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What scientist first stated that the paths of planets are ellipses instead of circles.?

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