Shortly after Tycho passed away in October 1601
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Johannes Kepler, who was the first to explain planetary motion correctly, was born on December 27, 1571 and died November 15, 1630 in Regensberg, Germany after an illness. He was 59. The destruction of the churchyard where he was buried has resulted in the loss of the location of his grave. A link can be found below.
Tycho Brahe used a variety of tools to measure planet and star movements, including large, precision-made astronomical instruments such as quadrants, sextants, and armillary spheres. He also developed his own instruments, such as the mural quadrant and the large mural sextant, which provided accurate measurements of celestial objects. Additionally, Brahe made extensive observations with the naked eye and maintained detailed records of his observations over several decades.
Gutenberg died in 1468 and was buried in the Franciscan church Mainz Germany, with his contributions to the printed word largely unknown. The church and the cemetery were later destroyed, and Gutenberg's grave was lost over time.
Johannes Polhemius entered Heidelberg University at the height of the fervor over the Winter King and Queen, the Palatinate Elector Frederick and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England. Heidelberg University was the intellectual center of a progressive (as we would say now) theological and philosophical movement influenced by esotericism and characterized by aspirations to 'spiritual alchemy' - that is, the transformation and purification of the spirit (rather than of metal). It was Protestant, but marked by greater tolerance toward other variants of Protestantism than was Lutheranism. It is not improbable that Rev. Johannes followed his professors' bent of thought as a young man. In fact, his rejection by his Dutch congregation in the Netherlands, on the grounds that his way of speaking was too Palatinate, may give a hint he never really abandoned it. They may have objected to the content of some of his sermons, rather than merely to his accent. His thinking may have been a bit too liberal for them.
Johannes Kepler studied under Tycho Brahe starting in 1600. After Brahe died one year later, Kepler took over his position as astronomer to the court in Prague.
He did his best work with Tycho Brahe who was a Danish nobleman who employed Kepler as a mathematician, a fairly junior appointment. Tycho tended to keep his measurements secret, to retain control, but after his death Kepler was able to to get full access and then produced his famous three laws of planetary motion.
Johannes Kepler, using measured planetary positional data provided by Tycho Brahe, showed that the orbits of the planets were ellipses ("flattened circles"), with the Sun at one focus of the eliipse.
Kepler did not literally steal Tycho Brahe's data; rather, he inherited it after Brahe's death in 1601. Brahe had meticulously collected astronomical observations over many years, but he had not fully analyzed them. Kepler, who had been working as Brahe's assistant, gained access to this invaluable data and used it to formulate his own laws of planetary motion, ultimately revolutionizing the understanding of celestial mechanics.
Tycho Brahe made measurements of the planets' positions over time with greater accuracy than ever before. The results were used by Johannes Kepler to create the three laws of planetary motion in which the elliptical orbit makes its first appearance in the historyof scoentific thought. Later, Isaac Newton's discoveries in gravity and dynamics explained why elliptical orbits are so important and universal.
Johannes Kepler did. In perhaps the greatest demonstration of empirical discovery,he took Tycho's data ... compiled over a lifetime of observing and reporting wherethe planets appeared in the night sky ... and deduced three simple statements thatdescribed a system of planetary motion that could produce those appearances.Kepler didn't say why the planets should behave that way and, technically, he didn'teven say that they do behave that way. He merely said: Here's a system to describethe motion of the planets, and by the way, it fits what we actually see the planetsdoing in the sky over periods of many years, and it's simpler than any other systemthat's ever been offered, so there may be a good chance that it's true.Almost 100 years later, Isaac Newton was writing his own hypotheses, theories,and conjectures, including his 'laws' of motion and his 'law' of gravity. He was ableto show that IF his laws of motion and gravity are correct, then one result would bethat moons and planets MUST behave according to Kepler's laws.
Tycho Brahe (14 December 1546 - 24 October 1601) was a Danish nobleman who is said to be the greatest obvervational astronomer of his age. A flamboyant character with a gold nose. His nose was cut off in a dual with another nobleman. He was known to live to excess. He often ate large rich meals and also drank a lot of alcohol. It was this that actually caused his death through an infection in his bladder caused of years of glutony and excess. He was granted an estate on the island of Hven and built an observatory called Uraniborg. However a disagreement with the king in 1597 caused him to leave to become the official imperial astonomer for the Holy Roman Emporer the Czech Rudolph II in Prague. He built a new observatory at Benatky nad Jizereo. It was here that from 1600 until his death in 1601 that Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 - 15 November 1630) was his assistant. Kepler was is said to be the greatest mathematian of his age. Acurate observations of wandering stars (planets) over many years allowed Johannes Kepler, to calculate the 3 laws of planetary motion. Although Kepler had to wait until after Brahe's death to get all the information he needed.
Johannes Kepler discovered that the planets have elliptical orbits, and published the theory in 1618. It happened after he was given access to accurate measurements made by Tycho Brahe in Denmark. It took over 1000 years to discover, because the planets' orbits are very like circles, and a system using circles made a good model of a planet's orbit until observations became accurate enough to reach the proper answer.
Kepler's three "laws" of planetary motion constitute Kepler's explanation of the motions of the inner six planets of the solar system. He formulated them from years of sweating over the notebooks kept by another individual who spent his life watching the planets and keeping records of their motions. (Tycho Brahe). After Kepler's death, Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity. Anybody who has enough geometry and calculus to give Gravity a good massage can show mathematically that IF gravity works the way Newton suggested it does, then the planets MUST move in the ways described by Kepler's Laws ... a nice confirmation of the work of both Newton and Kepler. These laws not only do a good job of describing how the planets move, but when we use Kepler's and Newton's formulas to figure out how to aim artificial satellites, Apollo capsules, and interplanetary probes to the outer solar system, those things always go where we want them to go ... more nice confirmation of the same theories. Oh yes. That's right. Both of them are "just theories".
It was the result of hard work by Johannes Kepler, working at the start of the 17th century on new observations by Tycho Brahe. Kepler had a set of measurements of the planets' positions, and over a period of months and years he tried to explain the movements of the planets, because they did not exactly fit the old theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus. So he said to himself, let's try an ellipse, and it worked. At that stage he did not have a reason for the elliptical orbit, other than that it fitted the observations. Much later, Newton explained how a planet moving in the Sun's gravity must follow an elliptical orbit.
It was the result of hard work by Johannes Kepler, working at the start of the 17th century on new observations by Tycho Brahe. Kepler had a set of measurements of the planets' positions, and over a period of months and years he tried to explain the movements of the planets, because they did not exactly fit the old theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus. So he said to himself, let's try an ellipse, and it worked. At that stage he did not have a reason for the elliptical orbit, other than that it fitted the observations. Much later, Newton explained how a planet moving in the Sun's gravity must follow an elliptical orbit.
This is Kepler's second law of planetary motion, also known as the law of equal areas. It states that a planet moves faster when it is closer to the Sun and slower when it is farther away, so that the area swept out by a line connecting the planet to the Sun is equal over equal time intervals.