December 26, 2011 - These Laws Can't Be Broken
These Laws Can’t Be Broken Johannes Kepler, born 440 years ago this week, was a German mathematician who used decades of precise measurements of planetary positions made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe to formulate three laws that describe planetary motion. These humble laws, which in part state that planets move in elliptical orbits, speeding up when closer to the Sun and slowing down when farther away, form the basis for our current ability to send spacecraft to explore the planets. Jupiter (above) obeys these laws as it orbits the Sun; the Hubble Space Telescope (which took the picture) follows them as it orbits the Earth; and even the rogue asteroid that slammed into Jupiter in 2009 leaving a “black eye” in the southern hemisphere was itself simply obeying these immutable laws.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / H. Hammel (Space Science Institute) / Jupiter Impact Team
Weekly Calendar
December 26, 2011 - January 1, 2012
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 26
Boxing Day (Canada, U.K., Australia)
First Day of Kwanzaa
Jupiter appears stationary
Tuesday 27
Venus 6° south of Moon
1571: Johannes Kepler born
1984: Meteorite ALH 84001 discovered
Wednesday 28
Neptune 6° south of Moon
1882: Arthur Eddington born
Thursday 29
Pluto in conjunction with Sun
1980: STS-1 leaves Vehicle Assembly Building and rolls out to launch pad
Friday 30
1957: Wernher von Braun proposes the Saturn-class launch vehicle
Saturday 31
New Year's Eve
Uranus 6° south of Moon
1864: Robert Aitken born
2004: Cassini makes first flyby of Iapetus
Sunday 1
New Year's Day
First Quarter Moon 1:15 AM ET
1801: Giuseppe Piazzi discovers asteroid Ceres