Republic of the Philippines

Commission on Higher Education

DARAGA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Salvacion, Daraga, Albay

CHAPTER 2.2: ANCIENT ASTRONOMY

CONTENT
 Astronomy around the World

 Early Greek and Roman Cosmology

 Measurement of Earth by Eratosthenes

 Hipparchus and Precession

 Ptolemy’s Model of the Solar System

Let’s Achieve These!

By the end of the discussion, students will be able to:

a. Explain how Greek astronomers were able to deduce that Earth is spherical.
b. Explain how Greek astronomers were able to calculate Earth’s size.
c. Describe the motion of Earth called precession.
d. Describe Ptolemy’s geocentric system of planetary motion.

Let’s Begin
Ask yourself, what is the shape of the Earth?

Is it shaped like a Donut?, a Cube?, Flat?, or a Sphere?

 Let’s Dig Deeper!

Astronomy around the World

Arab Civilization

 They updated the methods for measuring the movements of celestial bodies
and continued to develop the models of the universe.
 Scientists translated studies from Sanskrit, Greek, and Pallavi into Arabic, by
taking advantage of existing research, the medieval astronomers earned the
methods to tracks the positions of celestial bodies. And at the time they were
the Sun,the Moon and the five known planets (Mercury,Venus,Mars,Jupiter
and Saturn).

Ancient Babylonia
  Despite the scarcity of resources from the Babylonian era, a recently
translated tablet revealed their pioneering use of a modern method to track
Jupiter's path.
 Babylonian astronomers used trapezoid-shaped graphs to determine Jupiter’s
movements. They calculated how the planet’s velocity changed from day to
day and the distance covered by Jupiter over two consecutive 60-day
intervals.

Ancient China

 Ancient China's rich history includes vital contributions to astronomy, such as

naming and observing stars.
  Archaeological records on bones buried in the ground provide evidence of
their meticulous recording of 1600 observations of solar and lunar eclipses
from 750 BC.

Ancient Egypt

 Like other civilizations, ancient Egyptians studied the night sky to align their
structures with cardinal points.
 The Pyramids entrance are all on the north side, and the temples of the
pyramids are on the east side.
 Ancient Egyptians used obelisks and sundials for timekeeping.They initially
divided day and night into 12 equal parts.
Early Greek and Roman Cosmology

At least 2000 years before Columbus, educated people in the eastern

Mediterranean region knew Earth was round. Belief in a spherical Earth may have
stemmed from the time of Pythagoras, a philosopher and mathematician who lived 2500
years ago. He believed circles and spheres to be “perfect forms” and suggested that
Earth should therefore be a sphere. As evidence that the gods liked spheres, the
Greeks cited the fact that the Moon is a sphere, using evidence we will be learning later
on.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

 Aristotle also knew that the Sun has to be farther away from Earth than is the
Moon because occasionally the Moon passed exactly between Earth and the
Sun and hid the Sun temporarily from view. We call this a solar eclipse.
 Aristotle cited convincing arguments that Earth must be round:
 First is the fact that as the Moon enters or emerges from
Earth’s shadow during an eclipse of the Moon, the shape of the
shadow seen on the Moon is always round.
 As a second argument, Aristotle explained that travelers who
go south a significant distance are able to observe stars that
are not visible farther north. And the height of the North Star—
the star nearest the north celestial pole—decreases as a
traveler moves south.
Aristarchus of Samos (310–230 BCE)
 Suggested that Earth was moving around the Sun, but Aristotle and most of
the ancient Greek scholars rejected this idea.
Reasons for their conclusion:
 Aristotle thought that if Earth moved about the Sun, they would be observing
the stars from different places along Earth’s orbit.
 As Earth moved along, nearby stars should shift their positions in the sky
relative to more distant stars. In a similar way, we see foreground objects
appear to move against a more distant background whenever we are in
motion.

The apparent shift in the direction of an object as a result of the

motion of the observer is called parallax. We call the shift in the
apparent direction of a star due to Earth’s orbital motion stellar
parallax.

 The Greeks made dedicated efforts to observe stellar parallax, even enlisting
the aid of Greek soldiers with the clearest vision, but to no avail. The brighter
(and presumably nearer) stars just did not seem to shift as the Greeks
observed them in the spring and then again in the fall.

 This meant either that Earth was not moving or that the stars had to be so
tremendously far away that the parallax shift was immeasurably small. A
cosmos of such enormous extent required a leap of imagination that most
ancient philosophers were not prepared to make, so they retreated to the
safety of the Earth-centered view, which would dominate Western thinking for
nearly two millennia.
Measurement of Earth by Eratosthenes

The Greeks not only knew Earth was round, but also they were able to measure its
size. The first fairly accurate determination of Earth’s diameter was made in about 200
BCE by Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE), a Greek living in Alexandria, Egypt. His method
was a geometric one, based on observations of the Sun.

The Sun is so distant from us that all the light rays that strike our planet approach
us along essentially parallel lines.

Eratosthenes was told that on the first day of summer at Syene, Egypt (near
modern Aswan), sunlight struck the bottom of a vertical well at noon. This indicated that
the Sun was directly over the well—meaning that Syene was on a direct line from the
center of Earth to the Sun.
 At the corresponding time and date in Alexandria, Eratosthenes observed the
shadow a column made and saw that the Sun was not directly overhead, but was
slightly south of the zenith, so that its rays made an angle with the vertical equal to
about 1/50 of a circle (7°). Because the Sun’s rays striking the two cities are parallel to
one another.

Hipparchus and Precession

 Hipparchus (c190 BC to c120 BC)

 Born in Nicaea, Bithynia (now Turkey)
 First Greek astronomer, catalogs brightness and position of over 800 stars.
 Determines the length of the year.
 Discovers the Precession of the Equinoxes.
 Hipparchus is often called the first real astronomer, as he was the first Greek to
actually make systematic observations of the sky.
 He was also a very talented mathematician who made great strides in the
development of the classic Greek model of the solar system.
 He also divided the star into apparent magnitudes according to the apparent
brightness.

 It takes about 26 000 years for Earth's axis to complete one cycle of precession.
 The direction in which axis points does indeed change slowly and regularly a motion
we call procession.
 The direction in which axis points does indeed change slowly and regularly a motion
we call procession.
 Hipparchus is often called the first real astronomer, as he was the first Greek to
actually make systematic observations of the sky.
 He was also a very talented mathematician who made great strides in the
development of the classic Greek model of the solar system.
 He also divided the star into apparent magnitudes according to the apparent
brightness.

Ptolemy’s Model of the Solar System

Claudius Ptolemy was a 2nd century Greek mathematician, astronomer and

geographer famous for his controversial geocentric theory of the universe, which would
form the basis of our understanding of the motions of stars and planets for over than a
thousand years.
 Ptolemy accepted Aristotle's idea that the Sun and the planets revolve around a
spherical Earth, a geocentric view. Ptolemy developed this idea through observation
and in mathematical detail.
It is believed that Ptolemy made contributions to the geocentric theory around 140
AD. Although his life is not well known, he lived between from late 80 AD to late 160 AD
in Alexandria, Egypt. Much of his work was based on his observations of the night sky
and his knowledge of mathematics.
Ptolemy synthesized Greek knowledge of the known Universe. His work enabled
astronomers to make accurate predictions of planetary positions and solar and lunar
eclipses, promoting acceptance of his view of the cosmos in the Byzantine and Islamic
worlds and throughout Europe for more than 1400 years.
Ptolemy placed the Earth at the centre of his geocentric model.