Kepler

 

David Singapogu

 

16/9/21

 

CH B

 

 

 

            Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer who spent many years looking at the prbits of planets and trying to explain things that we had been wondering for years. He was born in the town of Weil der Stadt in Germany. As a kid he was always fascinated with astronomy and loved looking at the stars at night. His fascination with astronomy did not die down as he grew older.

 

            Over the years Kepler came up with three laws that went hand in hand with each other. The first on is that planetary orbits are ellipses. His idea was that the planets’ orbits were not circular but rather ellipses where the sun was off-center.

 

            His next idea was that since the orbits of the planets were ellipses, the planets distance to the sun changed every so often. So, some parts of the year the earth was closer to the sun while at other parts the earth was quite far away, thus explaining why winter was colder than summer.

 

            The final idea that Kepler presented was the idea that the smaller the orbit is, the faster a full rotation of it is. In other words, mercury’s orbit is faster than ours because it is closer to the sun.

 

            Kepler’s ideas have been developed to what we know today. In fact Nasa had a telescope in space called the Kepler space telescope! It helps us find planets orbiting other stars—but that another story for anther time…!

 

"Johannes Kepler." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 5 Aug. 2021.

“Kepler’s Laws.” Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, Mar. 2021, p. 1.

“Kepler, Johannes.” Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, Jan. 2018, p. 1