What is an orbit?
Q: What is an orbit?
A: An orbit is the path that an object takes in space when it goes around a star, a planet, or a moon.
Q: How was the Sun's orbit viewed many years ago?
A: Many years ago, people thought that the Sun orbits in a circle around the earth. Every morning the Sun came up in the east and went down in the west. It just seemed to make sense that it was going around the earth.
Q: Who discovered gravity controls orbits?
A: Isaac Newton discovered that gravity controls the orbit of planets and moons.
Q: Is Earth a satellite of any other object?
A: Yes, Earth is a satellite of the sun, just like how Moon is a satellite of Earth!
Q: How many satellites does Sun have orbiting it?
A: The sun has lots of satellites orbiting around it, like planets, and thousands of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
Q: What did Copernicus and Galileo think about orbits? A: When people first began to think about orbits, they thought that all orbits had to be perfect circles, and they thought that circle was "perfect" shape. Copernicus and Galileo believed this too.
Q: Are all planetary orbits perfect circles? A:No , when people began to study motions of planets carefully they saw not all planetary orbits were perfect circles; some were almost perfect circles while others were more oblong (egg shaped).
