Johannes Kepler lived roughly from 1570-1630. He was an assistant to Tycho Brahe and prepared Brahe’s collection of studies in astronomy for publication after his death as well and took over Brahe’s records. Kepler is mainly known for discovering three laws of planetary motion (pages 32-33 of our textbook).
1st Law: The orbits of the planets are elliptical, not circular.
2nd Law: The planets cover equal areas in equal amounts of time in their elliptical orbit.
3rd Law: The square of the planets’ orbital period is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the planet to the sun.
In addition, Kepler also explained that the tides are caused by the moon and the first to suggest that the sun rotates on its axis. Kepler used the telescope a lot and was even the first to explain the principles of how a telescope works and he also tried to use stellar parallax (difference in direction of a celestial body as seen from two widely separated points) caused by the Earth’s orbit to measure the distance to the stars.
In addition, Kepler also explained that the tides are caused by the moon and the first to suggest that the sun rotates on its axis. Kepler used the telescope a lot and was even the first to explain the principles of how a telescope works and he also tried to use stellar parallax (difference in direction of a celestial body as seen from two widely separated points) caused by the Earth’s orbit to measure the distance to the stars.
Works Cited:
Cleveland, Cutler J. "Kepler, Johannes." Encyclopedia of Earth. Boston Univsersity, 8 Sept. 2006. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Kepler,_Johannes.
NASA. "Kepler: Johannes Kepler." Kepler: A Search for Habitable Planets. Ames Research Center, Aug. 2010. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/JohannesKepler/#anchor778225.
Field, J. V. "Johannes Kepler." Turnbell Server. JOC/EFR, Apr. 1999. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. <http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Kepler.html>.
This is good... I got this one off of Bb already. Only missing piece is how he applies to our class and the body of knowledge of astronomy... how is astronomy different for his contributions?
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