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Because that's the way gravity works. If you take Newton's formula for the force

of gravity, and you have enough geometry and calculus, you can massage the

formula around and derive Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. His first law

says that planets move in ellipses with the sun at one focus. Kepler got that from

Tycho's notebooks, where he wrote down the results of years and years of watching

and measuring the positions of the planets. Kepler showed that the ellipse was the

best fit to what Tycho actually saw happening in the sky. Then 100 years later, Newton

came along and showed, with one simple formula to describe gravity, why orbits must

be ellipses.

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Related Questions

What is the shape of the orbit that the planets take called?

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