The eccentricity of an ellipse measures how flattened a circle it is. It is equal to the square root of [1 - b*b/(a*a)]. The letter a stands for the semimajor axis, ½ the distance across the long axis of the ellipse. The letter b stands for the semiminor axis, ½ the distance across the short axis of the ellipse. For a perfect circle, a and b are the same such that the eccentricity is zero. Earth’s orbit has an eccentricity of 0.0167, so it is very nearly a perfect circle.