In Washington, D.C., there is a large grassy area south of the White House known as the Ellipse. It is actually an ellipse with major axis of length 1048 ft and minor axis of length 898 ft. Assuming that a coordinate system is superimposed on the area in such a way that the center is at the origin and the major and minor axes are on the x- and y-axes of the coordinate system, respectively, find an equation of the ellipse.
The eccentricity of an ellipse is defined as e = c / a. For an ellipse, 0 < c < a, so 0 < e < 1, when e is close to 0, an ellipse appears to be nearly circular. When e is close to 1, an ellipse is very flat.