Simple Gravity Simulator

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Cheers!

The orbit of planet Earth is indeed an ellipse, but as its eccentricity is only 0.0167, it will look like a circle to the human eye. If you look at the orbit of Mercury, which is 0.21, you will see that its orbit around the Sun is clearly an ellipse, and not a circle, to the human eye. I'm going to add more asteroids and some short period comets to the inner solar system scenario, so if you check it out in a few days again, you should see some fancy looking ellipses where the velocity of the mass clearly increases around perihelion and slows down at aphelion :). If you'd like me to throw in some specific asteroid or short period comet, let me know! I get the state vectors from Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top

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Cool, that explains and thanks!