The fundamentals of astronomy for beginners
A kig figure in the scientific revolution of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler was an astronomer, mathematician, astrologer and staunch Lutheran. He was born on 27 December 1571 into a lower middle-class family in the town of Weil der Stadt (in today’s southern Germany). In a pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment era – driven by rival Protestant and Catholic Reformations – tensions, antagonisms, devil-fearing and witch-hunting were rife. Many people were persecuted for their beliefs.
Abandoned by a feckless soldier-of-fortune father, Heinrich, and a ‘generally unpleasant’ mother, Katharina, Kepler was brought up by grandparents. Small, sickly and sensitive, his hands and eyes disabled by smallpox, he took solace in God – the creator of all things – as he would throughout life.
Excelling in grammar, rhetoric, logic,…