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Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, in Astronomy and Classical Physics, Laws Describing

Kepler's laws describe the motion of planets around the sun, stating that planets move in ellipses with the sun at one focus, that they sweep out equal areas in equal times, and that the squares of their orbital periods are proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun. Kepler derived the laws from observations by Tycho Brahe, and they were crucial to Newton formulating his law of universal gravitation.

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79 views2 pages

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, in Astronomy and Classical Physics, Laws Describing

Kepler's laws describe the motion of planets around the sun, stating that planets move in ellipses with the sun at one focus, that they sweep out equal areas in equal times, and that the squares of their orbital periods are proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun. Kepler derived the laws from observations by Tycho Brahe, and they were crucial to Newton formulating his law of universal gravitation.

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Alvin
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Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, in astronomy and classical physics, laws describing

the motions of the planets in the solar system. They were derived by the German
astronomer Johannes Kepler, whose analysis of the observations of the 16th-century
Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe enabled him to announce his first two laws in the year
1609 and a third law nearly a decade later, in 1618. Kepler himself never numbered
these laws or specially distinguished them from his other discoveries.

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion can be stated as follows:

1. The Law of Orbits: All planets move about the Sun in elliptical orbits, having the
Sun as one of the foci.
2. The Law of Areas: A radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal
areas in equal lengths of time.
3. The Law of Periods: The squares of the sidereal periods (of revolution) of the
planets are directly proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the
Sun.

Kepler's laws were derived for orbits around the sun, but they apply to satellite orbits as
well.

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 law 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.

The usefulness of Kepler’s laws extends to the motions of natural and


artificial satellites as well as to unpowered spacecraft in orbit in stellar systems or near
planets. As formulated by Kepler, the laws do not, of course, take into account the
gravitational interactions (as perturbing effects) of the various planets on each other.
The general problem of accurately predicting the motions of more than two bodies
under their mutual attractions is quite complicated; analytical solutions of the three-
body problem are unobtainable except for some special cases. It may be noted that
Kepler’s laws apply not only to gravitational but also to all other inverse-square-law
forces and, if due allowance is made for relativistic and quantum effects, to the
electromagnetic forces within the atom.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kepler.html

https://www.britannica.com/science/Keplers-laws-of-planetary-motion

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