Kepler's laws of planetary motion
Leyes de Kepler del movimiento planetario
- Date
- 1609-1619 · confidence high
- Place
- Prague, Bohemia, Czechia
- Credited to
- Johannes Kepler
- People
- 👤 Johannes Kepler1571–1630
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Working from Tycho's observations of Mars, Kepler discovered that the planets trace ellipses with the Sun at one focus, sweep out equal areas in equal times, and that their periods relate to their distances. The first mathematical laws of the cosmos.
The third law was published in 'Harmonices Mundi' (1619) from Linz.
What it led to
- Newton's law of universal gravitation
- The Rudolphine Tables
- Dynamical astrophysics
- Calculation of the orbits of satellites and probes
- The law of universal gravitation (inverse square)
- Celestial mechanics
- The definitive abandonment of spheres and epicycles
- Astrodynamics and satellite orbits
Built on
- Copernican heliocentrism1543
- Great Comet of 1577 beyond the Moon1577
- Tycho Brahe's observations
- Copernicus's heliocentrism
Made possible
- Kepler's equation1609
- Law of universal gravitation1687
- Cassini's laws1693
- Rudolphine Tables
- Celestial mechanics
- Rudolphine Tables (1627)
- Calculation of artificial satellite orbits