Credit: NASA. History and Astronomy Glenn Holliday Rappahannock Astronomy Club Night in Washington's Day at Kenmore November

Transcription

1 Credit: NASA History and Astronomy Glenn Holliday Rappahannock Astronomy Club Night in Washington's Day at Kenmore November

2 People = Astronomy Credit: Science Museum of Brussels 37,000 years old (Old Stone Age). It's easy to assume people have been naming the stars astronomy for as long as there have been people. 25,000 years old (Old Stone Age). Credit: Musée des Antiquités Nationales at St-Germain-en-Laye Both may have non-astronomical interpretations.

3 Art = Astronomy 13,000 years old (Middle Stone Age), France. People have put the stars into art as long as they have made art. Credit: Wikicommons 6,000 years old (New Stone Age), Scotland.

4 Stories = Astronomy England Plough Germany Wagon Burma Crab Finland Net India 7 Sages China Dipper Great Lakes Rotating Man Greece Bear Western America Bear Credit: Wikicommons Cultures across 20,000 years have the same story about hunters chasing a bear. It may have traveled with migrants from Siberia to America. The Pleiades have a similar ancient legacy. Both Europe and America have the same story about 7 people who go up into the sky and become stars.

5 Writing = Astronomy Credit: British Museum 4000 years old (Bronze Age), Babylon. Babylon Egypt Greece Arabia Europe India China Arabia Europe South America Central America North America Australia Pacific From Arabia: Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, Altair From Rome: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn

6 Math = Astronomy 5,000 years old (New Stone Age) Calendars 4,000 years old (Bronze Age) Navigation 3,000 years old (Bronze Age) Geometry 2,500 years old (Iron Age) Trigonometry

7 Math = Astronomy Credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2,300 years old (Babylon) Pre-Calculus This tablet was collected a century ago. In 2015 it was translated, studied, and found to contain Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion. (A planet sweeps across equal areas under its orbit in equal amounts of time.) The tablet uses geometry to compute and predict the positions of Jupiter, starting with any date on which the planet first becomes visible on the horizon. It divides a polygon repeatedly to approach the limit of the curve of the planet's orbit. This was not known again until the 1600s.

8 Technology = Astronomy 2,700 years old (Iron Age), Nimrud (Assyria) Oldest lens known 1609 Galileo's second telescope, copied from earlier Dutch telescopes Credit: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,

9 The Renaissance = Astronomy 1543: Copernicus: you can explain the movements you see better if the Earth goes around the sun rather than the other way round Galileo observed the first direct physical evidence that Copernicus was right. Galileo publicized enthusiastically. Our first modern science writer.

10 Supernovas Support the New Astronomy Greek model: Stars are unchanging. Disproved by two new stars: Tycho's Star As bright as Venus (mag -4), visible in daytime. Visible for 11 months. 8,000 light years away. Kepler's Star Brighter than any star (mag -2). Visible in daytime for 3 weeks, at night for 18 months, though 20,000 light years away. Extremely unusual to have two visible supernovae in 35 years. There has not been another this bright since these two.

11 America = Astronomy 1690s David Rittenhouse, America's first telescope maker Harvard founded. Its astronomy course causes America's first student protest. Thomas Jefferson's plan for the astronomical observatory at the University of Virginia.

12 Citizen = Astronomy Three bright comets in 1664, 1680, and 1682 fueled the public imagination, the publication of almanacs, and astrology in America. Every gentleman of the Enlightenment was an amateur scientist. This is one of 15 telescopes George Washington owned. Credit: Mount Vernon The legacy of this Enlightenment value is our modern citizen science. Amateurs sometimes do science when professionals can't.

13 Accelerating Centuries of Acceleration 1781 Herschel discovers Uranus. Revolutionary: First new planet since ancients. Credit: NASA 1800s Messier catalogs objects outside our solar system. He doesn't know that's where they are. 1841: Galle discoveres Neptune, where theory predicted it would be. The man who discovered a planet with the point of his pen. Credit: NASA

14 Recent History 1800s Spectroscopy gives a new way to gather new kinds of information about stars. Helium discovered first on Sun, later on Earth. 1930s Edwin Hubble discovers some faint fuzzies are outside our own galaxy. Credit: NASA From 1920s: Rocketry gives birth to space flight, which makes new tools for astronomy Credit: NASA

15 Exoplanets Today's New Science The first direct image of a protoplanet (blue) sweeping up material (red) from its surrounding protoplanetary disk. Credit: Keck Observatory

16 Astronomy on Other Planets Credit: NASA Curiosity, on Mars, took this picture of Earth in the Martian sky Credit: NASA

17 Future = Astronomy Credit: NASA The next telescope to go to space The James Webb Space Telescope The one after that? Maybe on the Moon