Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion

OBJECTIVES

-Explain the difference between rotation

and revolution.
-Describe three laws of planetary motion.
-Describe how distance and mass affect
gravitational attraction.
 Did You Know?

• The Earth travels at an orbital speed of

108,000 km (67,000 miles) an hour.

• The Earth is the densest planet in the Solar

System.
 Planetary Motion
• Why do the planets revolve around the
sun and not fly off into space?

• The answer lies in Newton’s Universal

Law of Gravitation and Kepler’s Law’s
of Planetary Motion
Johannes Kepler

• A German astronomer who

studied the motion of the
planets.

• He discovered the three

laws of planetary motion by
studying the astronomical
data left in his care by Tycho
Brahe.

• These laws were later

derived mathematically by
Sir Isaac Newton.
Planetary Rotation – The spinning of a
planet on its axis
For every rotation that the Earth makes around the sun
we get a day and a night.
• Orbit– When one body follows another
body in a path.
• Revolution – One complete trip for an
orbiting object
While studying Mars, Kepler discovered
that it didn’t move in a circle.
Kepler’s First Law: Planets move
around the Sun in a elliptical motion, not
a circle.
 Kepler’s 2nd Law of Planetary Motion

- as the planets get closer to the sun, they move faster

in their orbit.
- as the product of the distance from the focus and the
transverse velocity is a constant.
- the line from a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal
areas in equal periods of time.
Kepler’s 2nd Law of Planetary
Motion:
 Kepler’s 3rd Law of Planetary Motion

- the farther from the sun, the longer it

takes that planet to go around the sun.

- the ratio of square of the period, P,

and the cube of the semi-major axis,
a, is the same for all planets in the
solar system.
M is the mass of the Sun; m is the mass of a planet; a is the
semimajor axis; and P is the period of a planet.
 Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation

- Every particle in the universe attract with each other with

a force that is directly proportional to the product of their
masses and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between them. (Newton’s Universal Law of
Gravitation)
 Motion of the moon around the
Earth.

Motion of the planets around the Sun

 Formation of galaxies

Formation of clusters of galaxy

 Why planets, like Earth, are
round?

Why there are ocean tides?

The force of gravity depends on the size
and distance of the objects involved
• Gravity holds objects
in place in space:
– Earth’s gravitational
pull is what keeps the
moon from flying off in
space
– The Sun’s gravitational
pull is what keeps the
Earth and other
planets from flying off
in space
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