A central configuration q 1 (0), …, q N (0) is an initial configuration such that if the particles were all released with zero velocity, they would all collapse toward the center of mass C. Such a motion is called homothetic. Central configurations may also give rise to homographic motions in which all masses moves along Keplerian trajectories (elliptical, circular, parabolic, or hyperbolic), with all trajectories having the same eccentricity e. For elliptical trajectories, e = 1 corresponds to homothetic motion and e = 0 gives a relative equilibrium motion in which the configuration remains an isometry of the initial configuration, as if the configuration was a rigid body. Central configurations have played an important role in understanding the topology of invariant manifolds created by fixing the first integrals of a system.