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Renaissance
Space and Stars
 Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 6 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.83

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    galileo, ellipse, elliptical, planetary, outermost, copernicus, orbit, lifetime, crater, sphere, assignment, launch, universe, theory, fastest, assistant
     content words:    Johannes Kepler, Prime Mover, Tycho Brahe, Kepler Space Observatory, Space Observatory

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Johannes Kepler
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Johannes Kepler grew up in an exciting time for scientists. During his lifetime, the way people looked at the heavens was changing.
 
2     In the old way of understanding the universe, or the solar system as we call it today, the earth was at the center. The planets were believed to revolve around the earth, and the stars never changed. Some scientists pictured the heavens as a series of crystal spheres that turned slowly around the earth. The planets were fastened to these spheres, and that is how they moved.
 
3     This was not just the scientific position of that time; it was also the religious position. The Church taught that the arrangement of the solar system was part of God's plan. God was known as the Prime Mover of the spheres, and Heaven was located in the outermost sphere. This had been the accepted view of the solar system for nearly 2,000 years.
 
4     In the 1500s and 1600s, some scientists were beginning to question all or part of this theory. Copernicus had already stated that the sun, not the earth, was at the center of the solar system. Galileo had been condemned by the Church for publishing similar views.
 
5     Another scientist, Tycho Brahe, had built an observatory and begun to take careful measurements of the objects in the sky. Johannes Kepler went to work for Tycho Brahe as his assistant. He was put to work on a puzzling part of the project. Kepler's assignment was to figure out the orbit of Mars. At that time, it was believed that all of the planets' orbits were circular since they were within the crystal spheres. The measurements they had been getting for Mars, however, didn't fit with the idea of a circular orbit. Kepler figured out that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse, or oval, rather than a circle.

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