Tag Archives: Kepler

Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was important to astronomy because he was a master mathematician and calculator. He worked in conjunction with Tycho Brahe who, through his brilliant eyesight made a lot of readings. Kepler used these readings to make deductions of how the solar system and the universe work. His three laws still hold true today: […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler’s contribution to astronomy can be matched by few. The laws of planetary motion appropriately named Kepler’s laws are still used to this day for approximating planetary orbits. His equations and observations gave us insight into the relationship between orbital period and orbital distance. Ultimately, Kepler’s contributions to astronomy played a key role in […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context – Kepler

Johannes Kepler’s(1571-1630) love for astronomy started at a young age. He had amazing mathematical prowess although challenged by poor vision which limited his ability in astronomical observation. During his prime years, he worked as an assistant to astronomer Tycho Brahe who collected numerous and accurate data of celestial positions in hope of building his own […] Continue reading

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In Conclusion…

  As the semester comes to a close and my first semester taking an astronomy class ends on Monday, I can say that I was not expecting to learn half of the topics we read about. I’m just completed confounded by all the information that we learned about our Universe and our solar system. From […] Continue reading

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The Constant Search For Life

In this past week, three new planets have been discovered in Kepler’s habitable zone. These three planets are announced to potentially host life. This may or may not be true, but the thought of finding planets slightly larger than earth that are in the Goldilocks zone is exciting in itself. For me, this is what […] Continue reading

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Conservation of Angular Momentum and Kepler’s Second Law

Conservation laws are very important laws for celestial objects in the universe. Without conservation laws, all these celestial objects will not obey predictable motions as they do in this universe. I am going to talk about conservation of angular momentum in this post. Any objects orbiting or rotating have angular momentum. To change angular momentum […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571- November 15, 1630) Johannes Kepler was initially hired as Tycho Brahe’s apprenctice.  When Tycho died, Kepler was left to make sense of his observations; after years of analyzing them and trying to make sense of them in terms of circular orbits, he finally realized that planetary orbits are ellipses, not circles.  […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context – Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a 17th century astronomer born in the city of Weil der Stadt in the Holy Roman Empire, in what is today Germany. He is best known for his discovery of the elliptical orbits of planets and his planetary laws of motion. These three laws explained that the planets orbited the sun […] Continue reading

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Kepler and the elliptical orbits

Johannes Kepler produced remarkably accurate results from the movement of the planets.  After concluding that the planets move in elliptical orbits and that the planets sweep out equal area in equal time, he calculated the distance of the planets from … Continue reading Continue reading

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Johannes Kepler in Context

Johannes Kepler (1571-16300) was absolutely vital to the study of astronomy in that he was the first to seriously propose that planets orbited the sun in ellipses, not circles. This greatly increased the accuracy of predicting astronomical events and helped to bring physics and astronomy a little bit closer together. Major Historical Events and People […] Continue reading

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