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Earth's orbit is an ellipse, not a perfect circle. Earth's distance from the Sun varies by about 3 million miles throughout the year. Earth's orbit's semimajor axis is approximately 93 million miles.

An ellipse is one of four conic sections, i.e. instruments of anguish in math classes. The ellipse obeys the equation: (x/a) ² + ( y/b) ² = 1. In this specific case a = 40, while b = 30. An ellipse is ...