Kepler's hypothesis vicaria (Q1205939)

The purpose of this paper is to make a theoretical analysis of Kepler's hypothesis vicaria. The planetary hypothesis based on circular and uniform motions can attain an accuracy substantially higher than almost all elliptical hypotheses proposed before Newton's time. With the exception of Kepler's area law only Horrock's and Wing's computational methods (ca. 1640 and 1669) are comparable. Kepler's parameters, however, differ considerably from the optimum ones and his hypothesis vicaria shows sinusoidal deviation of as much as \(6'\) in longitude from modern theory. In order to clarify this the author has presented a theoretical method, independent of Kepler's iterative computation, for determining the fundamental orbital elements of the planets.