All the orbits are elliptical as radio astronomer's post shows. As to how "wild" they are is pure semantics, sort of like the meaning of 'alone' (in a room, in a building, in a city, in a country, on earth, in the universe). I will not waste my time with such hair-splitting.
(Cue flashback/dream-sequence ripples)
Junior makes a general statement in post 283 about the planetary orbits:
...nearly circular orbits of the planets...
gore3000 unloads on Junior in post 472:
The orbits of the planets are wildly elliptical. Some of the planets [Note: plural] that we think of as nearer to the sun are at times further out than those we consider farther from the sun. You clearly do not know beans about astronomy.
RadioAstronomer posts a correction in post 486 (he shows his work for extra credit):
{orbit data snip} If you notice only two planets have a high eccentricity; Mercury and Pluto. Only one of them cross the mean distance of another planet from the Sun and that is Pluto and Neptune. Briefly Pluto is closer to the Sun than Neptune when [Pluto] is at perihelion.
The eccentricity of our planet's orbit is mild; aphelion and perihelion differ from the mean Sun-Earth distance by less than 2%. In fact, if you drew Earth's orbit on a sheet of paper it would be difficult to distinguish from a perfect circle and that is with e = 0.0167.
gore3000 publishes post 493 wherein he pitches a hissy fit about being corrected while simultaneious pretending that Junior started the whole thing:
All the orbits are elliptical as radio astronomer's post shows. As to how "wild" they are is pure semantics, sort of like the meaning of 'alone' (in a room, in a building, in a city, in a country, on earth, in the universe). I will not waste my time with such hair-splitting.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled flame war, already in progress...
Ah, but you left out the caveat that RA gave you: even circular orbits are "elliptical" in that they can be characterized as an ellipse of eccentricity = 0.
As to how "wild" they are is pure semantics, sort of like the meaning of 'alone' (in a room, in a building, in a city, in a country, on earth, in the universe). I will not waste my time with such hair-splitting.
Ah, the Clintonian response. It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is..... You're dead wrong, as I'll show momentarily.
Elliptical orbits are characterized by a parameter called the "eccentricity" represented by the letter "e." The value of that paramater ranges from 0 for circular orbits, and approaches 1 at the other extreme, as the orbit approaches parabolic.
Orbits that have small values of "e" (low eccentricity) are rightfully characterized as "nearly circular" as "Junior" stated. Orbits that have very high eccentricity (the value of "e" approaches 1) are highly elliptical and could be characterized as being "wildly" elliptical. Periodic comets typically have highly, or "wildly" elliptical orbits; Halley's is a good example. But no PLANET has an eccentricity remotely close to 1. Hence, it is impossible to correctly use the phrase "wildly elliptical" to describe the the orbit of ANY planet in our solar system.
As has already been pointed out to you, all but two planets have eccentricities of LESS THAN 0.10. These can only be characterized as "slightly eccentric" or "nearly circular" because that is exactly what they are.
The two remaining planets, Mercury and Pluto, have eccentricities that lie in the range between 0.20 and 0.25. Such an orbit vould be characterized as "modestly" or "moderately" elliptical, but NEVER as being "wildly" elliptical. 0.25 is not remotely close to being equal to 1.0 when the value ranges from 0 to 1.
In conclusion, "Junior" was right in that most planets have nearly circular orbits, and the two that aren't are only modestly eccentric, and your characterization of planetary orbits as being "wildly eccentric" is not true for ANY planet. The data provided by "RadioAstronomer" in NO way support your inaccurate characterization of planetary orbits.
If you think otherwise, I DARE you to ping him and see what he says.
Come on; time's a'wasting.
I've already invited you TWICE to ping "RadioAstronomer" to see if he agrees with you that his data supports your ORIGINAL assertion that the planets have "wildly elliptical" orbits, but you've yet to ask him.
Why is that? You aren't a coward, are you? Just ask him.
Only one planet passes within the orbit of another -- Pluto (which passes within Neptune's orbit). The other planet's orbits are nowhere near as eliptical as Pluto's, and are very nearly circular. You can never, ever, admit when you are wrong, can you?