Joyce Lorraine A.

Osim Date: September 3, 2020

BSED-Science Instructor: Ms. Jezzel Rabe

Johannes Kepler’s 3 Laws of Planetary Motion

It is always a captivating thing to learn about astronomy, particularly now that

people are interested with the things outside the Earth. One person’s research that is
always going to be remembered in the fields of astronomy is Johannes Kepler. The
German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) worked
briefly with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who gathered some of the most
accurate observational data on planetary motion in the pretelescope era. When
Brahe died in 1601, Kepler inherited his data books and devoted many years of
intensive effort to finding a mathematical description for the planetary motion
described by the data. Kepler also was a vigorous supporter of the Copernican
heliocentric system. He was successful in deriving three laws of planetary motion
which led to our current understanding of the orbital motion of planets, moons, and
comets as well as man-made satellites and spacecraft.

Accordingly, the first two laws were published in 1609, about the time Galileo
was first making astronomical observations with his telescope. The third law did not
appear until a decade later, in 1619. So, the first law of planetary motion stated that
the orbit of each planet is an ellipse with the sun at one focus, this law is also called
the Law of Ellipses. It describes the geometrical shape of the orbit as an ellipse,
which accounts for the manner in which the distance from the sun to the planet
changes as the planet travels along its orbit. This law includes the concept just like
perihelion and aphelion. The perihelion is the point in the orbit at which the planet is
closest to the sun whereas the aphelion is the point farthest from the sun. Prior to
Kepler's time, it was assumed that the planetary orbits were concentric circles with
the sun at the center, because it was thought that only the perfect geometrical curve
of the circle could describe the motion through the heavens of perfect celestial
bodies. However as the accuracy of the observational data increased it became
clear that the distance from the sun to each planet was not constant, as it would be
for a circular orbit. Increasingly complicated geometrical constructions using several
circles were proposed in an attempt to fit the data for an individual planet orbit.
Kepler was the first person to recognize that an ellipse, rather than a circle, is the
geometrical curve which describes the shape a planet orbit in a simple and elegant
manner.

Moving on, the second law of planetary motion indicates that the line from the
sun to a planet sweeps out equal areas inside the ellipse in equal lengths of time,
this law is also known as Law of Equal Areas. Further to that, it is a concise
mathematical description of the observed fact that the rate at which the sun-planet
line rotates through space increases as the planet moves closer to the sun and
decreases as it moves farther from the sun. The distance along the orbit traveled by
the planet near perihelion in a given length of time for example, one month is greater
than the distance travelled near aphelion during the same length of time. This
phenomenon is described quantitatively by the statement that equal areas are swept
out in equal lengths of time. The time required to sweep out the total area inside the
ellipse is the orbit period of the planet.

The first two laws describe the motion of an individual planet. By contrast, the
third law states the manner in which the motions of the various planets are related to
each other. The third law of Kepler's planetary motion denotes that the squares of
the orbital periods of the planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean
distances from the sun, this law is also refer as the Law of Harmonies. It states that
the ratio formed by dividing the square of the orbit period of any planet by the cube
of its mean distance from the sun is the same value for all planets in the solar
system. The term mean distance, as used in the third law is simply the average of
the perihelion and aphelion distances. This mean distance is then half the distance
between perihelion and aphelion, and is called the semimajor axis of the ellipse.

Moreover, Kepler, to his credit, formulated these three laws based entirely on
empirical data, without the benefit of a fundamental theory which explained why
planetary motion satisfied these laws. The missing ingredient was the concept of
gravitational force, which was developed several decades later by Sir Isaac Newton.
However, Kepler's laws of planetary motion mark an important turning point in the
transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism and provide the first quantitative
connection between the planets, including earth. Above all, Kepler developed an
early interest in astronomy and made a significant astronomical observation that
people nowadays believe.