Astronomy Through The Ages

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Hilary Harvey
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1 Astronomy Through The Ages Astronomy is a very old science. Chemistry really didn t get going in earnest till at least the 1700s. Biology had its biggest early discoveries in the 1800s. Physics took off in the 1900s (Newton notwithstanding). But astronomy just look up and there it is. We ve been doing this for a long time.

2 Early Man Some of the earliest evidence of mankind s interest in the sky comes from drawings like the Pueblo Petroglyphs. Drawings of eclipses, comets, and supernovae have been uncovered. Generally speaking, however, early man had little to do with astronomy.

3 The Babylonians The Babylonians (~1600 BC) are among the first to actually record stuff. Positions of planets, times of eclipses stuff like that.

4 The Greeks The Greeks (the Hellenistic Culture; ~500 BC) inherited the astronomical records of the Babylonians and started to move things forward. They began to construct a cosmological framework. The sky began to move from just a tool for navigation and other practical things to a source of experimentation and exploration. They even knew the Earth was spherical, since the shadow of the Earth on the Moon was always circular. Eat it, Magellan.

5 The Greeks What s more, the Greeks took note that seven celestial objects moved, unlike the background stars. They called them planetes ( wanderers ) and we have since named our days of the week after them you may need to think of their Romance language words: The Sun (Sunday) The Moon (Monday) Mars (Tuesday Day of Mars) Mercury (Wednesday Day of Mercury) Jupiter (Thursday Day of Jupiter) Venus (Friday Day of Venus) Saturn (Saturday Day of Saturn)

6 Planets of the Week

7 The Greeks Thales (~480 BC) became the first to predict eclipses using information dating to the Babylonians. Eratosthenes (~220 BC) became the first to measure the circumference of the Earth, and the way he did it is truly awesome axiqw

8 Aside: Geometry Geo- is the stem word for Earth stuff, right? Geography is the study of locations on Earth. Geology is the study of the abiotic Earth. Geometry is math with shapes wait, what? Turns out, geometry literally means Earth measure and comes from Eratosthenes observations.

Ptolemy (AD 90-168) What s best-known about Ptolemy is that he first popularized the idea of a geocentric solar system. Geocentric = Earth-centered.

9 Ptolemy (AD ) What s best-known about Ptolemy is that he first popularized the idea of a geocentric solar system. Geocentric = Earth-centered. He put this forth in his work Almagest and it took until the 1500s for Nicolaus Copernicus to set the record straight. Ptolemy PSM_V78_D326_Ptolemy.png

10 The History of Astronomy In what today is England, early astronomers built Stonehenge. Stonehenge appears to be a rather primitive computer for determining the position of the planets and the Sun. Which in turn provided the native people with the ability to plan their seasonal pagan shindigs. Seriously, on the summer solstice, the Sun lines up with some of the stones perfectly.

11 The Big Leap Forward As you might guess, it s kinda hard to do astronomy without such a fundamental instrument as a telescope. Today, we even have telescopes in space. Lookin at you, Hubble. Before we transition from significant cultures to significant individuals within the field of astronomy, let s look at the history of the telescope.

12 The Invention of the Telescope Hans (Johan) Lippershey is generally regarded as the inventor of the first telescope. His patent application (which was denied by the government of Belgium) was submitted in With that, astronomy was launched (pun) into a new era. Hans Lippershey

13 Important Individuals With the telescope having become available as a tool, things really started to take off. Individuals, rather than cultures, began to become quite well known for what they were discovering.

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) Copernicus set forth the idea of the heliocentric solar system in De Revolutionibus. Heliocentric = Sun-centered. This was the beginning of the Copernican Revolution.

14 Nicolaus Copernicus ( ) Copernicus set forth the idea of the heliocentric solar system in De Revolutionibus. Heliocentric = Sun-centered. This was the beginning of the Copernican Revolution. Copernicus dedicated the book to Pope Paul III and knew he was going to cause some trouble. Most of that trouble got displaced onto Mr. Galilei. Nicolaus Copernicus (didn t know to look at the camera when taking a selfie)

15 Aside: Helium Every element on the periodic table emits a characteristic set of light wavelengths. Scientists can use that light signature to identify unknown elements. When analyzing light from the Sun, astronomers found a unique pattern of wavelengths. Since at the time there was no known counterpart to the element on Earth, scientists named it for the Sun: Helium (same word stem as Heliocentric ). Helium is the only element to have been discovered somewhere other than Earth.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Galileo made his own telescope He saw Venus going through various phases, along with moons orbiting Jupiter (not Earth) so why should Earth be the center of it all?

16 Galileo Galilei ( ) Galileo made his own telescope He saw Venus going through various phases, along with moons orbiting Jupiter (not Earth) so why should Earth be the center of it all? In addition, he observed sunspots directly, which led to complete blindness late in life. So Galileo supports the Copernican System, which by this point had been labeled as heresy by the Church. Galileo Galilei ( more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science. ) Hawking

17 Galileo s statements erupted into a big mess in 1633 after he published a book championing the Copernican System. As a result, Galileo was under house arrest for eight years, dying in captivity at age 77, completely blind. It took until 1992 for the Pope/Vatican to formally excuse Galileo for being correct. The Galileo Mess

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Tycho Brahe (pronounced Tieco Bra-hey ) made his observations from Hveen Island in Denmark.

18 Tycho Brahe ( ) Tycho Brahe (pronounced Tieco Bra-hey ) made his observations from Hveen Island in Denmark. He s credited for having some of the most accurate observations of the position of the stars and planets. And he did it without a telescope, but with giant instruments. Tycho Brahe (with early hipster stache)

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Pretty cool, except despite knowing of Copernicus s discoveries, he believed the Sun

19 Tycho Brahe ( ) Pretty cool, except despite knowing of Copernicus s discoveries, he believed the Sun revolved around the Earth, and the rest of the planets revolved around the Sun. Brahe s Naked-Eye Observatory

20 The Tychonic Solar System

21 William Herschel ( ) Herschel (and his sister Caroline) discovered Uranus. In fact, Caroline Herschel was the first woman to discover a comet and ultimately found eight of them. He also recorded a ton of new stars/nebulae in his New General Catalogue, which you might recognize for the NGC still used for non-stellar objects. Today, there are 7840 nebulae and clusters in the NGC and Herschel discovered 4630 of them. William Herschel (wrong camera, buddy)

William Herschel (1738-1822) Herschel and his sister Caroline discovered Uranus.

22 William Herschel ( ) Herschel and his sister Caroline discovered Uranus. He also recorded a ton of new stars/nebulae Not only was he the discoverer of Uranus, he was also the first to discover a planet. Huh? Every other planet, up to and including Saturn, can be seen with the naked eye and has been known since ancient times. However, you need a telescope to see Uranus. (giggle) William Herschel (wrong camera, buddy)

Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) Hubble is credited with having discovered that the universe is expanding.

23 Edwin Hubble ( ) Hubble is credited with having discovered that the universe is expanding. He worked with the largest telescopes in the world at the time and used them to discover much about extra-galactic objects (AKA deep space stuff). You probably know him as the namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope or the Hubble Deep Field, which is a region containing very Edwin Hubble (not a painting for once) young and very distant galaxies ḣttp://

24 Jupiter

25 Uranus

26 Neptune

28 The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula)

29 Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft

30 Saturn from the Cassini spacecraft

31 If Earth had rings Okay, so these are obviously not actual photos, but if the Earth were to have Saturn s rings, one artist (Ron Miller) thinks we would see something like this on the horizon

32 Washington Capitol

33 Guatemala

34 From the Equator (Quito, Ecuador)

35 Shadow on the Equator at Equinox

36 Tropic of Cancer at Equinox

The History of Astronomy

The History of Astronomy http://www.ichundmeinmitbewohner.de/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/mauna-kea-2.jpg Mauna Kea Observatories, HI Astronomy Through The Ages Astronomy is a very old science. Chemistry