Topics: Astronomy
Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are a set of laws, published by Johannes Kepler between 1609 and 1619, that describe the orbits of planets around the Sun.
There are three laws:
- Kepler’s First Law of Planetary Motion
- Kepler’s Second Law of Planetary Motion
- Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion
Kepler’s laws were formulated based on empirical observation and exhaustive analysis, but a few decades later, in 1687, Isaac Newton was able to prove them by means of calculus, his second law of motion and his law of universal gravitation. This work was published in the Principia Mathematica.