PHYS 1160

Introductory Astronomy
and the Search for Life
Elsewhere
Lecture 1
Introduction to
Astronomy

This Lecture
What is Astronomy
The Discovery of our Place in the Universe
- A brief history
The Scale of the Universe

What is Astronomy?
The scientific study of celestial objects
e.g. Planets, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe
as a whole.

It encompasses the study of everything

outside the Earths atmosphere.
The name comes from the greek words
astron ("star") and nomos ("law").

Other Astro words

Astrology is the idea that positions of celestial
bodies provide information on personality, human
affairs etc. Astrology is not a science.
Astrophysics is the study of the physics of
celestial objects.
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution
and distribution of life in the universe.
Astrometry is the science of measuring the
positions of celestial objects such as stars and
planets.
Astronautics is the study of space flight. It is a
branch of engineering.

A Brief History of Astronomy

Here we will look at the history of
astronomy
We will focus on the development of ideas
on our place in the universe.

An Ancient Science
The study of astronomy goes back at least to
the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia
(present day Iraq).
The Sumerians developed the first form of
writing (cuneiform) before 3000 BC.
They studied the motion of celestial bodies and
developed the practice of dividing the circle
into 360 degrees, and the degree into 60
minutes

Ancient Observatories?
Many ancient cultures
left structures with
astronomical alignments.
Pointing, e.g. to the rising
or setting Sun on specific
dates.

It is hard to know exactly

what role these structures
performed.

Stonehenge (about 2500 BC)

Ancient Greek Astronomy

The philosophers of ancient
Greece developed ideas about
the structure of the universe
that were to be influential for
two millenia.
As early as 500 BC
Pythagoras understood that
the Earth was round.

Bust of Pythagoras
(ca 580-500BC)

Geocentric Model
Greek philosophers such as
Eudoxus (a pupil of Plato)
developed an Earth
centered (geocentric)
model of the universe.
The model consisted of
concentric spheres around
the Earth carrying the
planets, Sun, Moon and
fixed stars.

Circles on Circles
The Greek philosophers
believed the motions of
planets must be circular (the
circle being the most perfect
figure).
But a single circular motion
could not explain the actual
motion of planets, that
sometimes have periods of
retrograde (backwards) motion.

Increasingly complex systems

of spheres on spheres, or
circles carried on other circles
were introduced.

Planetary motion modelled

with an epicycle carried on a
deferent.

The Ptolemaic System

The approach reached its
culmination with the work of
Claudius Ptolemy (ca 100-170 AD).
Ptolemy's treatise on astronomy
known as the Almagest is the only
comprehensive work on ancient
astronomy to have been preserved.
Claudius Ptolemy

It includes a star catalogue (based on

the earlier work of Hipparchus),
his model for planetary motions
and tables predicting the positions of
the Sun, Moon and planets.

The Copernican System

In 1543 Polish astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus published
his book De Revolutionibus
Orbium Coelestium (On the
Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres).
It outlined a system with the
Sun rather than the Earth at the
centre (Heliocentric system).
But Copernicus still used
circular motions, and still
needed systems of multiple
circles.

The Copernican (or

Heliocentric) system

Keplers Laws
The problem of planetary motions was finally
solved by German astronomer Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630).
Kepler, using the best observations then available,
discovered that the orbits of planets were ellipses,
not circles.
With elliptical orbits around the Sun he could
explain the motion of the planets in a simpler way
than either Ptolemy or Copernicus.
Kepler outlined three laws that described planetary
motion.

Galileo and the Telescope

Astronomy was revolutionized
in 1609 with the first
application of the telescope.
Galileo heard about the
invention of the telescope by
Dutch spectacle makers and
built his own.
The observations he made with
it provided strong evidence in
favour of the Copernican Sun
centered universe.
Galileos Telescopes

Galileo and the

Telescope
Galileo discovered four
satellites orbiting Jupiter
(today known as the
Galilean satellites). This
showed that it was at least
possible for bodies to orbit
something other than the
Earth.

Galileos observations of
the satellites of Jupiter

Galileo and the

Telescope
He also made observations
of Venus showing that it
went through a full cycle of
phases from thin crescent to
full in the same way that the
Moon does.
This could not happen if
Venus orbited the Earth
since it would never pass
behind the Sun.
It also changed in size as
expected if orbiting the Sun.

Galileos observations of
the phases of Venus

Newton and
Gravitation
Isaac Newton Principia
(1687)
showed that the orbits of
planets could be explained
by the action of gravitation.
A universal force between
any massive objects.
The same force that causes
objects to fall to the ground
on Earth.

Stellar parallax
The distance of the stars can be
measured by detecting their
parallax.
A nearby star should change its
position against the background
as the Earth moves round the
Sun.
The stars are so distant, however,
that the parallax movement is
extremely small.

Stellar Parallax
The first successful measurement
of stellar parallax was made in
1838 by Friedrich Bessel.
He measured the parallax of the
star 61 Cygni.
Distance of 9.8 light years.

Other measurements soon

followed.
Alpha Centauri was found to be the
closest star system, 4.34 light years
away.

A heliometer used for

measuring stellar parallaxes

The measurements confirmed

that the stars were other Suns
as had long been suspected.

Not only was the Earth no longer at the centre of the universe.
Now even the Sun was just one of billions making up the Milky
Way galaxy.

And in the early 20th century,

astronomers began to realise
that what had been called
spiral nebulae, were in fact
star systems like our own
galaxy.

Galaxies

The Milky Way was

one of many.

Spiral Galaxy M31 in Andromeda

And with modern

telescopes, we
can see to
distances of
billions of light
years, revealing
many billions of
galaxies.

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Scale of the Universe

1. The Solar System
Earth to Sun
150,000,000 km
8.3 light minutes
Neptunes orbit
4,500,000,000 km
4 light hours
Speed of light
300,000 km/sec

Light Years
You can see that even within our own solar
system distances are huge numbers of km.
Hence the light year

A light year is a measure of distance not time.

It is the distance light travels in one year.
The speed of light is 300,000 km per second.
So one light year is:
9,460,700,000,000 km

(or about 91/2 trillion)

Even so we can see distant objects to billions of

light years.

Scale of the Universe

2. The Milky Way Galaxy
Nearest star 4.2 light
years away.
Sun is ~25,000 light
years from centre of
galaxy.
100,000 ly across.

25,000 ly

Contains ~200 billion

stars.

Galaxies come in
different types and
sizes

Galaxies

Dwarf galaxies
100 million stars
Giant galaxies 1
trillion stars
NGC 1300 Barred
Spiral Galaxy

NGC 4414 Spiral Galaxy

Our Milky
Way galaxy
is a spiral
galaxy like
this.

M87 Giant Elliptical Galaxy

The Large Magellanic Cloud

Irregular Galaxy

Galaxy Clusters
Galaxies are not randomly distributed. They
are clumped together in groups called
clusters of galaxies.
galaxies
Clusters of galaxies themselves group
together in superclusters.
superclusters
Our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a small
group of galaxies called the local group,
group and
this is part of a much larger grouping called
the local supercluster.
supercluster

Scale of the Universe

3. Galaxies and
Clusters
Andromeda Galaxy
(M31) 2.9 million ly

Virgo Cluster of Galaxies

59 million ly

Abell S0740
450 million ly

Scale of the Universe

4. Galaxy Map
A map of the positions and distances of
more than 200,000 galaxies made with the
2dF instrument on the Anglo-Australian
Telescope.
Each blue dot is a
galaxy.
The clustering of
galaxies
known as large
scale structure
can be seen.

Scale of the Universe

5. Hubble Ultra Deep Field
1 million second (11.3
day) exposure with the
Hubble Space
Telescope - the
deepest image of the
Cosmos ever taken.
Shows ~10,000
galaxies - over whole
sky we would see
~100 billion galaxies
at this depth.
Nearest ~1 billion ly.
Furthest >10 billion ly.

The End
The next lecture will be an introduction to
astrobiology, the science of life in the
universe.