Keplers Laws of Planetary

Motion

 Inastronomy,Kepler's laws of
planetary motionare three
scientific lawsdescribing the motion of
planetsaround theSun. Kepler's laws are
now traditionally enumerated in this way:
Theorbitof a planet is anellipsewith the
Sun at one of the twofoci.
A line segment joining a planet and the
Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal
intervals of time.[1]
The square of theorbital periodof a
planet is proportional to the cube of the
semi-major axisof its orbit.

 Most planetary orbits are almost circles, so it is not

apparent that they are actually ellipses. Calculations of
the orbit of the planetMarsfirst indicated to Kepler its
elliptical shape, and he inferred that other heavenly
bodies, including those farther away from the Sun,
have elliptical orbits also. Kepler's work broadly
followed theheliocentric theoryofNicolaus Copernicus
by asserting that the Earth orbited the Sun. It
innovated in explaining how the planets' speeds
varied, and using elliptical orbits rather than circular
orbits withepicycles.[2]
Isaac Newtonshowed in 1687 that relationships like
Kepler's would apply in thesolar systemto a good
approximation, as consequences of his own
laws of motionandlaw of universal gravitation .
Together with Newton's theories, Kepler's laws became
part of the foundation of modernastronomyand
physics.

 Johannes Keplerpublished his first two laws about planetary motion in

1609, having found them by analyzing the astronomical observations
ofTycho Brahe.[10][2][11]Kepler's third law was published in 1619.[12][2]
Kepler in 1621 andGodefroy Wendelinin 1643 noted that Kepler's
third law applies to the four brightest moons ofJupiter.[Nb 1]The second
law ("area law" form) was contested byNicolaus Mercatorin a book
from 1664; but by 1670 he was publishing in its favour in
Philosophical Transactions, and as the century proceeded it became
more widely accepted.[13]The reception in Germany changed
noticeably between 1688, the year in which Newton'sPrincipiawas
published and was taken to be basically Copernican, and 1690, by
which time work ofGottfried Leibnizon Kepler had been published.[14]
Newton is credited with understanding that the second law is not
special to the inverse square law of gravitation, being a consequence
just of the radial nature of that law; while the other laws do depend on
the inverse square form of the attraction.Carl Rungeand
Wilhelm Lenzmuch later identified a symmetry principle in thephase
spaceof planetary motion (theorthogonal groupO(4) acting) which
accounts for the first and third laws in the case of Newtonian
gravitation, asconservation of angular momentumdoes via rotational
symmetry for the second law.[15]

First Law
Theorbitof everyplanetis anellipsewith the Sun
at one of the twofoci.
Mathematically, an ellipse can be represented by
the formula:
wherepis thesemi-latus rectum, andis the
eccentricityof the ellipse, andris the distance
from the Sun to the planet, andis the angle to
the planet's current position from its closest
approach, as seen from the Sun. So (r,) are
polar coordinates.
For an ellipse 0<<1; in the limiting case= 0,
the orbit is a circle with the sun at the centre (see
sectionZero eccentricitybelow).