Glitches and ellipses...

An ellipse is a closed curve that looks like a circle that has been squashed flat. Circles viewed from an angle – like the rings of Saturn – often look elliptical. Whereas every point on a circle is exactly the circumference divided by pii, divided by two in distance from the centre, a body would need a qualification in integral calculus to plot every point on the curve of an ellipse. The ellipse does not occur so readily in nature as the circle. Since a circle viewed from an angle can appear elliptical, Galileo thought he was seeing things when he plotted the path of a comet through the newly-fledged telescope. Well, he was. He was seeing an elliptical path, but the seventeenth-century genius thought it was all illusory. This was the only thing he was ever wrong about – apart from getting chummy with people who eventually betrayed him. In the meantime, I struggle to create a ‘simple’ ellipse with pin and string…