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The Earth orbits the Sun in an ellipse that is pretty close to being a perfect circle, and by definition the semi-major axis of our orbit is 1.0.—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 26 June 2011 The orbit is more elliptical than Earth's, with a semi-major axis of 1.056 AU.—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 26 June 2011 Technically, an Aten asteroid has a semi-major axis less than one Astronomical Unit.—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 26 Sep. 2012 Orbits are elliptical, and the semi-major axis is the half-diameter of the orbit along the long axis.—Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 26 Sep. 2012
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