CELESTIAL MECHANICS

Amrita Aranake, Joy Chen, Michelle Iarkowski, Patrick Kennedy,
Benjamin McLaughlin, Mengxi Ouyang, Joel Park, Roozbeh Razmpour,
Daniel Winograd-Cort, Christina Wright, Flora Wu

Advisor: Steve Surace
Assistant: Katy Rolfe

Mathematical relationships can be used to describe both the motion of the planets and the positioning of celestial bodies. Kepler’s Laws, formulated at the beginning of the seventeenth century by German mathematician Johannes Kepler, explain the nature of planets’ motion around the sun. In this paper, we prove these laws and derive a series of mathematical equations that illustrate the geometric relationships of an elliptical orbit using a combination of spherical trigonometric principles and calculus. We then utilize these relationships to calculate the time of sunrise and sunset from any given point on the Earth.

Paper

(Acrobat pdf file: 355 kb)

Presentation

(Acrobat pdf file: 769 kb)

Team Project Picture (jpg: 280 kb)

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