Early Astronomy

Ancient Astronomy
Stonehenge- an
arrangement of massive
stones on Salisbury Plain in
Southern England, contains
more than a dozen
astrological alignments
and was perhaps an
astronomical observatory.
It was built from 2800 BC
to 1075 BC.
Astronomy and the Greeks
Thales was the first person to use the
Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) as a
navigation aid. The Little Dipper
contains the North Star. The Greeks at
the time used the Big Dipper for
navigation, but since the Little Dipper
contains the North Star (Polaris), it
moves less over the course of a night.
He is said to have predicted a solar
eclipse in 585 BC, but it is
questionable if this was really
possible for him to do. If he did

Thales
predict it, no one knows how he did
it.
 First person to claim that
the earth was a sphere,
and the movement of the
planets, sun, moon and
stars could be described
by whole numbers and
mathematical precision.
Pythagoras was also the
first person to recognize
that Venus in the evening
and Venus in the morning
were in fact the same

Pythagoras
planet.
 Viewed the universe as
essentially mathematical
but argued that the reality
was only an optical illusion,
a distorted shadow of a
perfect ideal form.
Adopted the Pythagorean
idea regarding the motion
of heavenly objects and
added that those
astronomical bodies were
spherical in shape.

Plato
 He believed that the Earth was
the center of the universe and all
things below the sphere of the
moon were made up of four
terrestrial elements: earth, water,
fire and air.
On a calm day at sea, the upper
portion of a distant ship can be
seen while the lower portion is
not visible. During a lunar eclipse,
the shape of the Earth’s shadow
cast upon the moon indicates
circular shape. As one moves
north or south on Earth, new
constellations become visible,
All objects on the surface of a

Aristotle sphere fall toward its center.

  His most important contribution to
the field was the first known star
catalogue, which historians think he
was inspired to construct after
viewing a supernova.
 Among his major accomplishments
were:
1. The 1st use of trigonometry in
astronomical work.
2. The refinement of the method of
Aristarchus for measuring the relative
size of the Moon, Sun and the Earth.
3. The invention of the stellar
magnitude system for estimating star
brightness, a system which still in use
today.
4. The first known use of celestial

Hipparchus
coordinates.
5. The discovery of the precession of
the equinoxes.
  An Earth-Centered View of the
Universe.
 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. In doing so,
he rejected the hypothesis of
Aristarchus of Samos, who came
to Alexandria about 350 years
before Ptolemy was born.
Aristarchus had made the claim
that the Earth revolves around
the Sun, but he couldn’t

Ptolemy produce any evidence to back it

up.
 A Sun-Centered View of the
Universe
The center of the Earth is not
the center of the Universe,
only of Earth’s gravity and of
the lunar sphere.
The Sun is fixed and all other
spheres revolve around the
Sun.
Earth has more than one
motion, turning on its axis
and moving in a spherical
orbit around the sun.
The stars are fixed but
appear to move because of

Nicolaus Copernicus
the Earth’s motion.
 Father of Modern
Observational Astronomy
Credited with the creation of
the optical telescope, though
in truth he improved on
existing models.
He turned the new
observational tool toward the
heavens, where he discovered
the 4 primary moons of
Jupiter(known as Galilean
Moons), as well as the rings of
Saturn.

Galileo Galilei
 He is most famous for
his work on forces,
specifically gravity. He
calculated three laws
describing the motion
of forces between
objects, known today
as Newton’s Laws.

Isaac Newton
 Edwin Hubble twice
changed our
understanding of the
Universe, helping to lay
the foundations for the
Big Bang theory. First he
demonstrated that the
Universe was much
larger than previously
thought, then he proved
that the Universe is
expanding.
He is credited for
discovering galaxies
Edwin Hubble outside the Milky Way.
The Ptolemaic Model of the Universe
• The basic elements of
Ptolemaic astronomy,
showing a planet on
an epicycle with an
eccentric deferent and
an equant point. The
Green shaded area is
the celestial sphere
which the planet
occupies.
• In the Ptolemaic system, each planet is moved
by a system of two spheres: one called its
deferent; the other, its epicycle.
• The deferent is a circle whose center point,
called the eccentric and marked in the diagram
with an X, is removed from the Earth.
• The epicycle, is embedded inside the deferent
sphere and is represented by the smaller dotted
line to the right.