Epicycles, eccentrics, and ellipses: The predictive capabilities of Copernican planetary models (Q762041)

Using Tycho Brahe's observations assumed accurate to within a few minutes og arc, Johannes Kepler derived an elliptical orbit for the motion of Mars. The author argues that sixteenth-century and early seventeenth- century astronomers might as well have met the demands of Tycho's observational accuracy by fairly simple modifications of the traditional planetary models built up of compound circles. So from this point of view the ellipses entered the scene too early, perhaps because Kepler disliked epicycles for which he could see no plausible physical basis.