Pluto, for example, has a highly elongated orbit compared to the planets in our solar system and has an orbital eccentricity of 0.25. Earth has an orbital eccentricity of just 0.02. This new ...

The eccentricity of a planet's orbit is measured on a scale from 0 to 1, with 0 being a perfectly circlular orbit and 1 being highly elliptical. Dwarf planet Pluto's highly elliptical orbit around ...

Earth’s orbit around the Sun is not circular, but an ellipse that is slightly elongated with an eccentricity of 0.017. (An eccentricity of 0 is a circle, while the dwarf planet Pluto has a ...

Pluto and its moon Charon may have been briefly locked together in a cosmic “kiss”, before the dwarf planet released the smaller body and recaptured it in its orbit. Charon is the largest of ...

Charon is large in size relative to Pluto, and is locked in a tight orbit with the dwarf planet. A new simulation suggests how it ended up there. By Jonathan O’Callaghan Some 4.5 billion years ...

But the heavenly body – possibly a dwarf planet à la Pluto – isn't a frequent visitor. Located beyond Neptune, its extreme orbit circumnavigates the sun once every 25,000 years, taking it ...

Pluto, whose distance from the sun varies from 2.8 to 4.5 billion miles, is even more eccentric at 0.244. On the other hand, our home planet has an eccentricity of only 0.017. “Earth’s orbit ...