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A List of Kepler's Firsts
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First to correctly explain
planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the
first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal,
verifiable, precise.
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In his book Astronomia
Pars Optica, for which he earned the title of founder of modern optics he
was the:
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First to investigate the
formation of pictures with a pin hole camera;
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First to explain the process
of vision by refraction within the eye;
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First to formulate eyeglass
designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness;
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First to explain the use of
both eyes for depth perception.
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In his book Dioptrice
(a term coined by Kepler and still used today) he was the:
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First to describe: real,
virtual, upright and inverted images and magnification;
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First to explain the
principles of how a telescope works;
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First to discover and
describe the properties of total internal reflection.
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In addition:
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His book Stereometrica
Doliorum formed the basis of integral calculus.
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First to explain that the
tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo reproved him for this).
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Tried to use stellar
parallax caused by the Earth's orbit to measure the distance to the stars;
the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is
called astrometry.
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First to suggest that the
Sun rotates about its axis in Astronomia Nova
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First to derive the birth
year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.
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First to derive logarithms
purely based on mathematics, independent of Napier's tables published in
1614.
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He coined the word
"satellite" in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor
Iovis sattelitibus erronibus
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Kepler's Laws of
Planetary Motion Kepler was assigned the task by Tycho Brahe to analyze
the observations that Tycho had made of Mars. Of all the planets, the
predicted position of Mars had the largest errors and therefore posed the
greatest problem. Tycho's data were the best available before the invention
of the telescope and the accuracy was good enough for Kepler to show that
Mars' orbit would precisely fit an ellipse. In 1605 he announced The First
Law:
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Planets move in ellipses
with the Sun at one focus.
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The figure below illustrates
two orbits with the same semi-major axis, focus and orbital period: one a
circle with an eccentricity of 0.0; the other an ellipse with an eccentricity
of 0.8.
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