History of Astronomy and Ethnoastronomy

Ethnoastronomy

Refers to the system of beliefs and practices of ethno-linguistic groups regarding astronomical and
meteorological phenomena which form part of the upper world in their three-world view of the
universe.

One of the most well known astronomers & known as the father of Filipino Ethnoastronomy, was Dante
Lacsamana Ambrosio.

They used the movement of the stars, sun, and moon to know when the seasons changed from the wet
and dry season, to when to start planting or clearing the fields based on kaingin farming. They saw
images of hunting traps, crabs, coconut trees, ripples or bubbles in the water, a weaving loom, and
more.

Two prominent stars were Orion and Pleiades. While, some Spanish terms for the stars, such as Tres
Maria or Tatlong Maria, used to refer to Orions Belt, and Rosaryo, for Pleiades to refer to the rosary, are
more commonly known today, our ancestors had native terms and beliefs in these stars.

DEVELOPMENT OF PROPONENTS OF ASTRONOMY FROM THE ANCIENT TIMES TO THE RENAISSANCE

PERIOD

Astronomy

Is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious,
mythological, cosmological, calendrical, and astrological beliefs and practices of prehistory: vestiges of
these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy.
It was not completely separated in Europe (see astrology and astronomy) during the Copernican
Revolution starting in 1543. In some cultures, astronomical data was used for astrological
prognostication.

Pythagoras was the first ancient astronomer to suggest that there was a harmony of the spheres, and
that the movement of the planets, sun, moon and stars could be described by whole numbers and
mathematical precision. His other discovery was that the morning and evening star are the same thing,
the planet Venus

Ancient astronomy was significant was that it allowed ancient people and civilizations to keep track of
the passage of the seasons. This, by extension, meant they could better time when to plant or harvest
crops

Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland who founded modern astronomy in the early 16 th century when he said
the Sun is the center of the Universe. Galileo Galilei of of Italy who, in 1609, pointed the first telescope
at the sky and discovered craters on the Moon

SPACE EXPLORATION

Is the use of astronomy and space technology to explore outer space.[1] While the exploration of space
is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, its physical exploration though is conducted both
by uncrewed robotic space probes and human spaceflight. Space exploration, like its classical form
astronomy, is one of the main sources for space science

PHILIPPINE ETHNOASTRONOMY

Filipino ethnoastronomy: staring at the stars

In a nutshell, ethnoastronomy focuses on people’s understanding of astronomical phenomena in their

own cultural context across time. While astrologers see stars as the window to the future, Ambrosio
presented the sky as a sure door to our distant past

EARTH-MOON SYSTEM

The Moon and Earth consequently exert a strong gravitational influence on each other, forming a
system around Earth, and during the Earth-Moon system’s motion around the Sun, but there is always a
net regression. Such a change that is always in the same direction as time increases is called a secular
perturbation. Superposed on the secular perturbation of the longitude of the node are periodic
perturbations of centrifugal forces in the Earth-Moon and Earth-Sun systems. The Moon appears to be
orbiting Earth, but in reality both the Moon and Earth orbit their common centre of mass. The centre of
mass of the Earth-Moon system is located inside Earth nearly three-fourths of the distance from the
centre of the dynamics of the Earth-Moon system.

FEATURES OF THE MOON

It is a spherical rocky body, probably with a small metallic core, revolving around Earth in a slightly
eccentric orbit.

ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA INVOLVING THE EARTH, MOON, AND THE SUN

A solar eclipse, much like that of a lunar eclipse, is an astronomical phenomena that occurs when the
sun, Earth, and moon are in alignment

When the Moon passes between Sun and Earth, the lunar shadow is seen as a solar eclipse on Earth.
When Earth passes directly between Sun and Moon, its shadow creates a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses
can only happen when the Moon is opposite the Sun in the sky, a monthly occurrence we know as a full
Moon

Ancient people have observed that the moon changes its path and its appearance within a period of
29.5 days. They observed that the moon changes its appearance from thin semi-circular disk to full
circular disk. These phases of the moon is the basis of ancient calendars

The motions of the Earth, Moon, planets, and satellites lead to objects obscuring other objects and the
sunlight onto those objects. The lack of visibility due to the proximity to the Sun, the visibility due to
elongation from the Sun, or the positioning opposite to the Sun, are also resulting phenomena

The tides produce friction generally because the attraction of the moon tends to cause a “lag” in the
waters with respect to the earth’s rotation. It may be shown that the reaction tends to accelerate the
moon, causing it to move in an orbit continually increasing in distance from the earth.

The tidal levels and water motion which would result from Earth’s rotation and gravitational effects of,
in particular, the Earth, Sun and Moon, without any atmospheric influences.
Solar phenomena are natural phenomena which occur within the atmosphere of the Sun. These
phenomena take many forms, including solar wind, radio wave flux, solar flares, coronal mass ejections,
coronal heating and sunspots. These phenomena are believed to be generated by a helical dynamo,
located near the center of the Sun’s mass, which generates strong magnetic fields, as well as a chaotic
dynamo, located near the surface, which generates smaller magnetic field fluctuations. The total sum of
all solar fluctuations is referred to as solar variation. The collective effect of all solar variations within the
Sun’s gravitational field is referred to as space weather.

In simple terms, the auroras can be explained as an interaction of the solar wind and the Earth’s
magnetic field

THE MOON’S FORMATION AND EVOLUTION

The Moon likely started its life as a giant ball of magma formed from the remains of an impact on Earth
about four and a half billion years ago. After the hot material collected into a sphere, the magma began
to cool, eventually forming a crust on the surface of the Moon, with the magma just underneath.

The giant-impact hypothesis, sometimes called the Big Splash, or the Theia Impact, suggests that the
Moon was formed from the ejecta of a collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized dwarf planet,
approximately 4.5 billion years ago in the Hadean eon (about 20 to 100 million years after the Solar
System coalesced

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens
of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids

The Sun Is composed of about 75% hydrogen, 25% helium, and trace amounts of heavier elements. At its
core, the Sun’s temperature reaches over 15 million K (27 million°F) and its pressure is over 200 billion
times the pressure at Earth’s surface

Solar phenomena are natural phenomena which occur within the atmosphere of the Sun. These
phenomena take many forms, including solar wind, radio wave flux, solar flares, coronal mass ejections,
coronal heating and sunspot.

THE EIGHTH PLANETS AND THEIR MOONS

Mercury – 0.

Venus – 0.

Earth – 1.

Moon

Mars – 2.

Deimos

Phobos
Jupiter – 80 (57 confirmed, 23 provisional) Amalthea

Callisto

Europa

Ganymede

Io

Saturn – 83 (63 confirmed, 20 provisional)

Dione

Enceladus

Hyperion

Iapetus

Mimas

Phoebe

Rhea

Tethys

Titan

Uranus – 27.

Ariel

Miranda

Oberon

Titania

Umbriel

Neptune – 14

Nereid

Triton

OTHER OBJECTS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-
largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun
SOLAR SYSTEM BOUNDARIES

The boundary of the solar system – the place where the solar wind ends and interstellar space begins –
is called the heliopause. Voyager 2’s scientific instruments detected abrupt differences in plasma density
and magnetic particles upon crossing the heliopause

The Oort cloud represents the very edges of our solar system. The thinly dispersed collection of icy
material starts roughly 200 times farther away from the sun than Pluto and stretches halfway to our
sun’s nearest starry neighbor, Alpha Centauri