The long and short of comets

[fcbayer]

Earth's orbit is so close to a circle that if you could look at it from space, you couldn't really tell the difference. But many comets revolve along more stretched-out ellipses with the Sun near one end instead of in the center. It's as if the Sun were twirling each comet on a stretchy rubber band, that gets longer and then shorter again, each time the comet comes back around the Sun.

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/SegwayEd/lesso...ale/com3_a.html



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