Kepler's laws of planetary motion explaining how the planets' speeds varied, and using elliptical orbits rather than circular orbits with epicycles. Isaac Newton showed in 1687 that relationships like Kepler's would apply in the Solar System to a good approximation, as a consequence of his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation. Kepler's laws improved the model of Copernicus. If the eccentricities of the planetary orbits are taken as zero, then Kepler basically agreed with Copernicus: The eccentricities of the orbits of those planets known to Copernicus and Kepler are small, so the foregoing rules give fair approximations of planetary motion, but Kepler's
Kepler's laws of planetary motion law" is what became the Second Law in the set of three; but Kepler did himself not privilege it in that way. Johannes Kepler published his first two laws about planetary motion in 1609, having found them by analyzing the astronomical observations of Tycho Brahe. Kepler's third law was published in 1619. Kepler had believed in the Copernican model of the solar system, which called for circular orbits, but he could not reconcile Brahe's highly precise observations with a circular fit to Mars' orbit—Mars coincidentally having the highest eccentricity of all planets except Mercury. His first law reflected this discovery.