Kepler's Law of Planetary Motion
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer who discovered the laws that govern the motion of planets around the sun. Kepler's laws explain the way planets move in space and help us understand the solar system. Here are the three laws of planetary motion discovered by Kepler:
First Law: Law of Ellipses
Kepler's first law of planetary motion states that the path of each planet around the sun is an ellipse with the sun at one of the foci. An ellipse is a shape that looks like a stretched out circle. The point furthest away from the sun is called the "aphelion", while the point closest to the sun is called the "perihelion".
Second Law: Law of Equal Areas
Kepler's second law of planetary motion states that a line that connects a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. This means that a planet moves faster when it is closer to the sun and slower when it is further away. This law is also known as the "law of areas".
Third Law: Law of Harmonies
Kepler's third law of planetary motion states that the square of the period of revolution of a planet around the sun is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. This means that the farther away a planet is from the sun, the longer it takes to complete one orbit. The period of revolution is the time it takes a planet to make one complete orbit around the sun.
Kepler's laws of planetary motion helped astronomers understand the way the planets move in space. They also helped to disprove the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe. Kepler's laws were later used by Isaac Newton in developing his law of universal gravitation.