Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was important to astronomy since he came up with three laws to describe planetary motion (Kepler’s laws of planetary motion). The first law states that planets have elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus of the ellipse while the other focus is just empty space. This is significant because previous astronomers thought the planets had perfect, circular orbits. The second law or “area law” states that a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times during its orbit. This means that planets will move faster in its orbit when closer to the Sun and slower in its orbit when farther away from the Sun. The third law or “harmonic law” states that the square of a planet’s orbital period in years is equal to the cube of the semimajor axis (planet’s average distance from the Sun) in astronomical units (AU).
There are a few major historical events that occurred during Kepler’s lifetime. In 1614, John Napier developed logarithms. He designed a table which conveyed powers of a fixed number used as a base; this table could be used to calculate different roots, products, and quotients. This discovery of logarithms was important since they simplified calculations that could be considered long and tedious. In 1620, approximately 100 Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts on the Mayflower ship. This event was significant since it was the first long-term New England colony. Additionally, some of the group leaders wrote the Mayflower Compact which indicated the structure of one of the first governments created.
William Shakespeare was a famous historical figure in literature that lived during the same time period as Johannes Kepler. Shakespeare was born in April 1564 and died on April 23, 1616. His birthday is not entirely known, but it is usually celebrated on April 23rd. Shakespeare was an English poet who wrote approximately 37 plays and 154 sonnets. He is an important historical figure because his works, such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, are still being read and performed in numerous countries all over the world.
After completing this research, it was interesting to see a connection between Shakespeare, Kepler, and the Pilgrims. It so intriguing to me that all these significant historical figures were alive around the same time. Additionally, I had not heard much about Kepler and his discoveries before, so I was glad to learn more about his contributions to astronomy. Particularly, Kepler’s first law was interesting to me because I did not know that ancient astronomers thought that the planets had circular orbits since I just remember growing up learning that the planet’s orbits were elliptical. I am also in amazement at the mathematical relation Kepler was able to determine in his third law because I can only imagine all the effort and time he put into various calculations to come up with this equation that was quite revolutionary.
Awesome Astronomy 