Kepler's laws

British  

plural noun

1. three laws of planetary motion published by Johannes Kepler between 1609 and 1619. The first states that the orbit of a planet describes an ellipse with the sun at one focus. The second states that, during one orbit, the straight line joining the sun and a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. The third states that the squares of the periods of any two planets are proportional to the cubes of their orbital major axes

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Example Sentences

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Kepler's laws

Still, Kepler’s laws are purely descriptive: they do not help us understand what forces of nature constrain the planets to follow this particular set of rules.

From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016

Newton’s universal law of gravitation and Kepler’s laws describe the motions of Earth satellites and interplanetary spacecraft as well as the planets.

From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016

From the observed motion and the period of the “wiggle,” they could deduce the mass of Jupiter and its distance using Kepler’s laws.

From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016

A ring is a collection of vast numbers of particles, each like a tiny moon obeying Kepler’s laws as it follows its own orbit around the planet.

From Textbooks ● Oct. 13, 2016

All three of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion can be derived from Newtonian principles.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan