Find out what connects Kepler’s solids with hedgehogs, discover what some people think Kepler can bring to the world over 400 years after his death and find out about Kepler’s namesake, the name-pinching so-called Kepler Mission – that NASA’s mission to uncover other habitable planets in the Universe.

That’s right, here are a collection of totally random pdf documents relating to the work of our main man: Johannes Kepler:

From Kepler’s Echinus to Rubik
So, first off, lets see about that hedgehog we were talking about, and a sea urchin, and indeed the mathematics behind a small stellated dodecahedron and the platonic solids. See how they are connected in this pdf document and learn how to create the shapes that first became a happy family in the mind of Kepler. Illustrated by Paolo Ucello, Venice, Basilica of St. Mark, ~1430.

Kepler Astronomy Nova 400 Anniversaty by Mahoney in Aathens
Next we look into a document created in 2009 – which marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of Astronomia Nova (which contained the first two laws of planetary motion) – the most important scientific publication prior to Newton’s Principia. In it Mahoney notes that Kepler, with his tolerant views on religion, is a positive example of unity to a much religiously troubled 21st century.

So, what can Kepler and early astronomy offer the world today? As this document declares, perhaps one of Kepler’s greatest contribution is a timeless message of peace.

Kepler and the Kepler mission by Harman
Finally on to short introduction document created about the unimaginative name-thieves at NASA – who’s lame decision making has caused tremendous extra work for those of us who are researching the “real Johannes Kepler” on the web. Arghhh! Anyways in this intro about the Kepler mission we get a brief glimpse into the proposed mission that has since seen to have discovered a heap of Earth-like Planets our genius astronomer was one of the first to dream about.

Imaging what he would have thought about all this…considering he wasn’t even recognised as a pioneer in his day.