AST-1A Lecture 6: Ast_1-A_Day_6
Document Summary
Tycho brahe was able to establish a fine astronomical observatory on the north sea island of hven. Brahe was the last and greatest of the pre-telescopic observers in europe. Kepler developed a series of principles, now known as kepler"s three laws, which described the behaviour of planets based on their paths through space. The path of an object through space is called its orbit. Working with the data from mars (brahe) he eventually discovered that the orbit of that planet had the shape of a somewhat flattened circle, or ellipse. Ellipse is the simplest kind of closed curve, belonging to a family of curves known as conic sections. In an ellipse, the sum of the distance from two special points inside the ellipse to any point on the ellipse is always the same two points inside the ellipse are called its foci. The widest diameter of the ellipse is called its major axis.
