Top 5 Facts: Johannes Kepler

1. Family – Johannes Kepler and his first wife, Barbara Müller, had five children in total. However, the first two – named Heinrich and Susanna – both died in infancy. The following three survived. He married a second time in 1613.

2. Banishment – Kepler’s belief in a Sun-centred Solar System – along with his deep-rooted Protestantism – saw him banished from the Austrian, heavily Catholic city of Graz in August 1600.

3. Supernova – Kepler was the first astronomer to observe the SN 1604 star go supernova in October 1604. Two years later he described it in detail in his text De Stella Nova.

4. Rejection – When Kepler published two of his three laws in his groundbreaking work Astronomia Nova at first he was ridiculed and ignored by the majority of the scientific establishment, including Galileo Galilei.

5. Mountains – In New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park there’s a mountain range named after Kepler in tribute to his extensive contributions to the field of astronomy.