'Johannes Kepler' painting from August Köhler (1883-1964)
Photo: Kepler museum Weil der Stadt
The end of 2021 marks the 450th anniversary of Kepler's birth. He was born on December 27th in 1571 in the then free imperial city of Weil der Stadt. This is a welcome occasion to honour the world-famous astronomer of today’s Baden-Württemberg. The exhibition on show endeavours to portray Kepler in all his fascinating facets.
Sky-bound - himmelwärts - is a project of the 5th Institute of Physics in cooperation with the Kepler-Society e. V. in Weil der Stadt and numerous other partners. The exhibition will open on February 14th, 2022 at the "Haus der Wirtschaft" in Stuttgart. It will be on display until February 26th. Further presentations of the exhibition are are planned in other places.
For more than a thousand years until the early modern era, the world view of the Greek mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy (ca. 100-170 A.D.) seemed irrefutable: The Earth is at the center of the cosmos. This was also true for Tycho Brahe's (1546-1601) geo-heliocentric world view. Only a publication of Copernicus in 1543 shook this conception. Copernicus was the first to place the sun in the center of the universe. Kepler developed this new heliocentric world view further and searched for proofs. With his calculation of the orbit of Mars, which he published in his work "Astronomia Nova" in 1609, he proved that the planets orbit the sun in elliptical orbits. With the three planetary laws named after him, he made the decisive contribution to the breakthrough of the heliocentric world view, which is still valid today.
Photo: Detail from the map "Systema Solare et Planetarium" by Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724)
Contact
Karin Otter
Outreach
Robert Löw
Deputy Director