Gravitation Test - 5

The orbit of a planet around the Sun (or of a satellite around a planet) is not a perfect circle. It is an ellipse—a “flattened” circle. The Sun (or the centre of the planet) occupies one focus of the ellipse. A focus is one of the two internal points that help determine the shape of an ellipse. The distance from one focus to any point on the ellipse and then back to the second focus is always the same.

Kepler law of areas describes the speed of a planet travelling in an elliptical orbit around the sun. A planet’s orbital speed changes, depending on how far it is from the Sun. The closer a planet is to the Sun, the stronger the Sun’s gravitational pull on it, and the faster the planet moves. The farther it is from the Sun, the weaker the Sun’s gravitational pull, and the slower it moves in its orbit. So, statement of Kepler's law of area is "The line joining the sun to the planet sweeps out equal areas in equal interval of time". i.e. areal velocity is constant.

Kepler's 3^rd Law: T² = a³. Kepler's 3rd law is a mathematical formula. It means that if you know the period of a planet's orbit (T = how long it takes the planet to go around the Sun), then you can determine that planet's distance from the Sun (a is the length of the semimajor axis of the planet's orbit)