CHRISTINE SY 11-ROWLING ASSIGNMENT IN EARTH SCIENCE

Johannes Kepler, (born December 27, 1571, Weil der Stadt, Württemberg [Germany]—died November 15, 1630, Regensburg),
German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows: the planets
move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; the time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proporti onal
to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”); and there is an exact relationship between
the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits (the “harmonic law”). Kepler himself di d
not call these discoveries “laws,” as would become customary after Isaac Newton derived them from a new and quite different
set of general physical principles. He regarded them as celestial harmonies that reflected God’s design for the universe.
Kepler’s discoveries turned Nicolaus Copernicus’s Sun-centred system into a dynamic universe, with the Sun actively pushing
the planets around in noncircular orbits. And it was Kepler’s notion of a physical astronomy that fixed a new problematic for
other important 17th-century world-system builders, the most famous of whom was Newton.

Among Kepler’s many other achievements, he provided a new and correct account of how vision occurs; he developed a
novel explanation for the behaviour of light in the newly invented telescope; he discovered several new, semiregular
polyhedrons; and he offered a new theoretical foundation for astrology while at the same time restricting the domain in
which its predictions could be considered reliable. A list of his discoveries, however, fails to convey the fact that they
constituted for Kepler part of a common edifice of knowledge. The matrix of theological, astrological, and physical ideas from
which Kepler’s scientific achievements emerged is unusual and fascinating in its own right. Yet, because of the highly origin al
nature of Kepler’s discoveries, it requires an act of intellectual empathy for moderns to understand how such lasting results
could have evolved from such an apparently unlikely complex of ideas. Although Kepler’s scientific work was centred first and
foremost on astronomy, that subject as then understood—the study of the motions of the heavenly bodies—was classified
as part of a wider subject of investigation called “the science of the stars.” The science of the stars was regarded as a mix ed
science consisting of a mathematical and a physical component and bearing a kinship to other like disciplines, such as music
(the study of ratios of tones) and optics (the study of light). It also was subdivided into theoretical and practical categor ies.
Besides the theory of heavenly motions, one had the practical construction of planetary tables and instruments; similarly, the
theoretical principles of astrology had a corresponding practical part that dealt with the making of annual astrological
forecasts about individuals, cities, the human body, and the weather. Within this framework, Kepler made astronomy an
integral part of natural philosophy, but he did so in an unprecedented way—in the process, making unique contributions to
astronomy as well as to all its auxiliary disciplines.

Astronomical Work

The ideas that Kepler would pursue for the rest of his life were already present in his first work, Mysterium cosmographicum
(1596; “Cosmographic Mystery”). In 1595, while teaching a class at a small Lutheran school in Graz, Austria, Kepler experienced
a moment of illumination. It struck him suddenly that the spacing among the six Copernican planets might be explained by
circumscribing and inscribing each orbit with one of the five regular polyhedrons. Since Kepler knew Euclid’s proof th at there
can be five and only five such mathematical objects made up of congruent faces, he decided that such self -sufficiency must
betoken a perfect idea. If now the ratios of the mean orbital distances agreed with the ratios obtained from circumscribing
and inscribing the polyhedrons, then, Kepler felt confidently, he would have discovered the architecture of the universe.
Remarkably, Kepler did find agreement within 5 percent, with the exception of Jupiter, at which, he said, “no one will wonder,
considering such a great distance.” He wrote to Maestlin at once: “I wanted to become a theologian; for a long time I was
restless. Now, however, behold how through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy.”

Had Kepler’s investigation ended with the establishment of this architectonic principle, he might have continued to search
for other sorts of harmonies; but his work would not have broken with the ancient Greek notion of uniform circular planetary
motion. Kepler’s God, however, was not only orderly but also active. In

place of the tradition that individual incorporeal souls push the planets and instead of Copernicus’s passive, resting Sun,
Kepler posited the hypothesis that a single force from the Sun accounts for the increasingly long periods of motion as the
planetary distances increase. Kepler did not yet have an exact mathematical description for this relation, but he intuited a
connection. A few years later he acquired William Gilbert’s groundbreaking book De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et
de Magno Magnete Tellure (1600; “On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet, the Earth”), and he immediately
adopted Gilbert’s theory that Earth is a magnet. From this Kepler generalized to the view that the universe is a system of
magnetic bodies in which, with corresponding like poles repelling and unlike poles attracting, the rotating Sun sweeps the
planets around. The solar force, attenuating inversely with distance in the planes of the orbits, was the major physical principle
that guided Kepler’s struggle to construct a better orbital theory for Mars.

But there was something more: the standard of empirical precision that Kepler held for himself was unprecedented for his
time. The great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) had set himself the task of amassing a completely new set of
planetary observations—a reform of the foundations of practical astronomy. In 1600 Tycho invited Kepler to join his court at
Castle Benátky near Prague. When Tycho died suddenly in 1601, Kepler quickly succeeded him as imperial mathematician to
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Kepler’s first publication as imperial mathematician was a work that broke with the theoretical
principles of Ptolemaic astrology. Called De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus (1601; Concerning the More Certain
Fundamentals of Astrology), this work proposed to make astrology “more certain” by basing it on new physical and harmonic
principles. It showed both the importance of astrological practice at the imperial court and Kepler’s intellectual independence
in rejecting much of what was claimed to be known about stellar influence. The relatively great intellectual freedom possible
at Rudolf’s court was now augmented by Kepler’s unexpected inheritance of a critical resource: Tycho’s observations. In his
lifetime Tycho had been stingy in sharing his observations. After his death, although there was a political struggle with Tycho’s
heirs, Kepler was ultimately able to work with data accurate to within 2′ of arc. Without data of such precision to back up his
solar hypothesis, Kepler would have been unable to discover his “first law” (1605), that Mars moves in an elliptical orbit. A t
one point, for example, as he tried to balance the demand for the correct heliocentric distances predicted by his physical
model with a circular orbit, an error of 6′ or 8′ appeared in the octants (assuming a circle divided into eight equal parts).
Kepler exclaimed, “Because these 8′ could not be ignored, they alone have led to a total reformation of astronomy.” Kepler’s
reformation of astronomy was of a piece with his reform of astrology’s principles and Tycho’s radical improvement of the
celestial observations. Just as the spacing of the planets bore a close relation to the polyhedral forms, so, too, Kepler reg arded
only those rays hitting Earth at the right harmonic angles to be efficacious.

3 LAWS OF PLANETARY MOTION

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion can be stated as follows: (1) All planets move about the Sun in elliptical orbits,
having the Sun as one of the foci. (2) A radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths
of time. (3) The squares of the sidereal periods (of revolution) of the planets are directly proportional to the cubes of the ir
mean distances from the Sun. Knowledge of these laws, especially the second (the law of areas), proved crucial to Sir Isaac
Newton in 1684–85, when he formulated his famous law of gravitation between Earth and the Moon and between the Sun
and the planets, postulated by him to have validity for all objects anywhere in the universe. Newton showed that the
motion of bodies subject to central gravitational force need not always follow the elliptical orbits specified by the first l aw of
Kepler but can take paths defined by other, open conic curves; the motion can be in parabolic or hyperbolic orbits,
depending on the total energy of the body. Thus, an object of sufficient energy—e.g., a comet—can enter the solar system
and leave again without returning. From Kepler’s second law, it may be observed further that the angular momentum of
any planet about an axis through the Sun and perpendicular to the orbital plane is also unchanging .

MATTHEW N. MINOZA ASSIGNMENT IN EARTH SCIENCE

11-ROWLING

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler (/ˈkɛplər/;German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German
astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his laws
of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These
works also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation.Kepler was a mathematics teacher
at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an
assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his
two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallen stein.
Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting (or Keplerian)
telescope, and was mentioned in the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei. He was a corresponding
member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.

Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division
between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also
incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had
created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason.Kepler described his
new astronomy as "celestial physics",as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the
Heavens",transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical
physics.

Kepler's Laws
Johannes Kepler, working with data painstakingly collected by Tycho Brahe without the aid of a telescope, developed three
laws which described the motion of the planets across the sky.
1. The Law of Orbits: All planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus.
2. The Law of Areas: A line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
3. The Law of Periods: The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.
Kepler's laws were derived for orbits around the sun, but they apply to satellite orbits as well.
The Law of Orbits
All planets move in elliptical orbits, with the sun at one focus.
This is one of Kepler's laws. The elliptical shape of the orbit is a result of the inverse square force of gravity. The eccentricity
of the ellipse is greatly exaggerated here.
The Law of Areas
A line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
This is one of Kepler's laws.This empirical law discovered by Kepler arises from conservation of angular momentum. When
the planet is closer to the sun, it moves faster, sweeping through a longer path in a given time.
The Law of Periods
The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.
This is one of Kepler's laws.This law arises from the law of gravitation. Newton first formulated the law of gravitation from
Kepler's 3rd law.
Kepler's Law of Periods in the above form is an approximation that serves well for the orbits of the planets because the Sun's
mass is so dominant. But more precisely the law should be written

In this more rigorous form it is useful for calculation of the orbital period of moons or other binary or bits like those of binary
stars.