Kepler's laws of planetary motion formula_16 The area enclosed by the elliptical orbit is formula_17 So the period formula_18 satisfies and the mean motion of the planet around the Sun satisfies This captures the relationship between the distance of planets from the Sun, and their orbital periods. Kepler enunciated in 1619 this third law in a laborious attempt to determine what he viewed as the "music of the spheres" according to precise laws, and express it in terms of musical notation. So it was known as the "harmonic law". Using Newton's Law of gravitation (published 1687), this relation can be found in the case of
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.