Related papers: Kepler's Differential Equations
An interpretation of selected parts of Newton's Principia, with modern notation and methods. Keplers Laws are derived from an inverse square law using Newton's methods.
While Kepler was still working in Graz during 1598, some letters to his mentor Michael Maestlin demonstrate his interest in astronomical clocks and machines. The first letter, dated January 6, 1598 contains a detailed description of a…
This is an annotated translation of E126 'De novo genere oscillationum', in which Euler derived for the first time, the differential equation of the (undamped) simple harmonic oscillator under harmonic excitation, namely, the motion of an…
After some more than four centuries from the formulation and publication (in Astronomia Nova) of the Kepler's Equation, which relates the eccentric (and, intermediately, the true) anomaly of the planetary trajectories to the uniformly…
The hodograph, i.e. the path traced by a body in velocity space, was introduced by Hamilton in 1846 as an alternative for studying certain dynamical problems. The hodograph of the Kepler problem was then investigated and shown to be a…
Isaac Newton formulated the central difference algorithm (Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2020) 135:267) when he derived his second law. The algorithm is under various names ("Verlet, leap-frog,...") the most used algorithm in simulations of complex…
An elementary derivation of the Newton "inverse square law" from the three Kepler laws is proposed. Our proof, thought essentially for first-year undergraduates, basically rests on Euclidean geometry. It could then be offered even to…
Can a machine or algorithm discover or learn Kepler's first law from astronomical sightings alone? We emulate Johannes Kepler's discovery of the equation of the orbit of Mars with the Rudolphine tables using AI Feynman, a physics-inspired…
This is a translation from Latin of E348 'Methodus facilis motus corporum coelestium utcunque perturbatos ad rationem calculi astronomici revocandi', in which Euler develops a method to alleviate the astronomical computations in a typical…
Kepler's thinking is highly original and the inspiration for discovering his famous third law is based on his rather curious geometric approach in his Harmonices mundi for explaining consonances. In this article we try to use a modern…
The recent non-calculus proof of Kepler's first law succeeds because of an obscure, but valid property of the ellipse.
Euler derived the differential equations of elastica by the variational method in 1744, but his original derivation has never been properly interpreted or explained in terms of modern mathematics. We elaborate Euler's original derivation of…
Carlini's career was mainly dedicated to astronomy, but he was also a particularly skilled mathematician. In this article we collect and analyse his mathematical contributions in detail. In particular, in his important Memoir of the year…
Newton's Theorem of Revolving Orbits derives the force that is necessary to explain a particular precession that leaves the shape of an orbit unchanged. Newton showed that for an orbiting body that is already subject to any central force,…
In this contribution it is shown that the path from Kepler's results to Newtonian motion can be remarkably short and simple. Following this path we also give a straight forward computation of the direction angle of Hamilton's Hodograph.…
This article has a twofold purpose. On the one hand I would like to draw attention to some nice exercises on the Kepler laws, due to Otto Laporte from 1970. Our discussion here has a more geometric flavour than the original analytic…
We derive the first-order orbital equation employing a complex variable formalism. We then examine Newton's theorem on precessing orbits and apply it to the perihelion shift of an elliptic orbit in general relativity. It is found that…
Orbital motion of a body can be found from Newtonian equation of motion. However, it is useful to express the motion through time derivatives of Keplerian orbital elements, mainly if the motion is perturbed by small perturbing force. The…
An earlier paper [1] presented a gravity theory based on the optics of de Broglie waves rather than curved space-time. While the universe's geometry is flat, it agrees with the standard tests of general relativity. A second paper [2] showed…
Kepler's orbits with corrections due to Special Relativity are explored using the Lagrangian formalism. A very simple model includes only relativistic kinetic energy by defining a Lagrangian that is consistent with both the relativistic…