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Kepler's Laws

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18 views4 pages

Kepler's Laws

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finisher540
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Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion

In astronomy and classical physics, laws describing the motions of the planets in the solar
system were derived by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. Analysis of the observations
of the 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe enabled him to announce his first two laws
in the year 1609 and a third law nearly a decade later, in 1618. Kepler himself never numbered
these laws or specially distinguished them from his other discoveries.
These laws describe the orbits of planets around the Sun. The laws replaced the circular
orbits with the elliptical orbits and explained how planetary velocities vary.
The three laws state that:
1. The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
2. A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal
intervals of time.
3. The square of a planet's orbital period is proportional to the cube of the length of
the semi-major axis of its orbit.
The elliptical orbits of planets were indicated by calculations of the orbit of Mars. From this,
Kepler inferred that other bodies in the Solar System, including those farther away from the
Sun, also have elliptical orbits. The second law establishes that when a planet is closer to the
Sun, it travels faster. The third law expresses that the farther a planet is from the Sun, the
longer its orbital period.
Isaac Newton showed in 1687 that relationships like Kepler's would apply in the Solar System as
a consequence of his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation.

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Eccentricity
Eccentricity of an ellipse measures how flattened a circle is in it. It is equal to the square root of
[1 - b*b/(a*a)]. Here “a” stands for the semimajor axis and “b” stands for the semiminor axis
of the ellipse. For a perfect circle, a and b are the same such that the eccentricity is zero. Earth’s
orbit has an eccentricity of 0.0167, so it is very nearly a perfect circle.

Kepler’s Laws Elaborated

Kepler’s first law: Law of Orbits

Kepler’s first law states that “All planets move around the sun in elliptical orbits with the sun at
one focus”.

Explanation: An ellipse traced out by a planet around the sun. The closest point is P and the
farthest point is A, P is called the perihelion and A the aphelion. The semimajor axis is half the
distance AP.

Kepler’s second law


states that “The line joining a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal interval of
time”.
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Explanation:
P is the planet that moves around the sun in an elliptical orbit
∆A is the area swept
∆t is the time interval

Kepler’s Third Law states that “The square of the time period of the planet is directly
proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit”
P 2 α a3
Kepler’s third law is generalized after including Newton’s Law of Gravity his Laws of Motion by
writing P2 = 4π2 G (M1+M2)(a3)
Where,
M1 and M2 are the masses of the orbiting objects
Orbital Velocity Formula
We now use the orbital velocity formula
V orb = G M R
to calculate the orbital velocity of planet with mass M and radius R and G = Gravitational
constant = 6.67 × 10-11 m3/s2 kg

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