Historical Perspective of

the Earth and Universe

Ancient and Modern Astronomy
Greeks’ Three Types of Terrestrial
Motion
 Highly influenced by Aristotle ideas: Natural and Violent motion
 Diurnal Motion: daily motion of stars and other celestial bodies
across the sky. This motion is due to the Earth’s rotation from
west to east, which causes celestial bodies to have an apparent
motion from east to west (ROTATION)
 Annual Motion: motion of the earth in its orbit around the sun.
the changing seasons was attributed to it. (REVOLUTION)
 Precession of Equinoxes: the gradual shift in the orientation of
Earth’s axis. Also, this precession moves along westward along
the ecliptic relative to the fixed stars, which is opposite to the
motion of stars along the ecliptic
 Concept of Spherical earth
 Pythagoras reasoned that if the Moon was round, then the Earth
must be round as well
 Aristotle observed that every portion of the earth tends toward the
center until by convergence or compression. He noticed that
travellers going south tend to see southern constellations-rising
above the horizon. And the shadow of the earth is round on the
moon during lunar eclipse
 Plato’s Problem of “Saving the
Appearances”
 The appearances of the erratic motions of the sun, moon and
planets were not perfect
 He could not find an explanation that perfect things like
planets were moving imperfectly—he thought this to be an
offense
 He observed the planets do not move at a constant rate and moved
in irregular retrograde. He left this problem to his students in order
to explain logically
Eudoxus: model of homocentric and concentric spheres inside a
sphere sharing a common center-Earth
 It continued to influence the cosmology of Western thought until
16th century.
 Greeks (great philosophers, keen observers): used
philosophical arguments to explain the natural events
happening including the movements of heavenly bodies.
Science during the golden age was also influenced by
religion
Anaxagoras

• moon shone only

by the reflected
sunlight but only
half of it is
illuminated
Aristotle

• Geocentric
• Earth is spherical.
• Other planets and
stars were
concentric centered
on the earth
Lunar Phases
Aristarchus

• the first Greek to profess

Heliocentric view.
• The sun was much larger
than the earth and 5x
farther than the moon.
• Attempted to calculate the
distance of the sun based
on the earth and moon
diameters
Eratosthenes

• made a successful
attempt to determine
the size of the earth-
39,400 km (closer to
the earth’s
circumference=40,075
km)
Hipparchus

• observed and compared the

brightness of 850 stars.
• Developed a method for
predicting the times of the
lunar eclipses.
• Measured the length of the
year to within minutes of
the modern value
Claudius Ptolemy

• Geocentric Model-
successful in the
prediction of heavenly
bodies’ motion but
violated the basic premise
of uniform circular motion

• However if observed,
some planets drift
westward (retrograde
motion)
Nicolaus Copernicus

• Heliocentric Model

• Scientific inquiry in
the Arab world
spread by his
influence
Tycho Brahe

• Unable to see the apparent shift in

the position of stars-he did not
support Copernican Theory

• Tychonic System: sun and moon

revolved around the earth. Others
revolved around the sun

• Used his invented pointers to

symmetrically measure the locations
of heavenly bodies

• Made accurate measurement of Mars

Johannes Kepler

• Realized there was a variation in the

orbital speed of Mars. It speeds up as
it moves closer to the sun but slows
down as it moves away from it.

• Proposed the three laws of planetary

motion.
Three Laws of Planetary Motion

• Law of Ellipses: the path of the

planets around the sun is in
elliptical shape with the center
of the sun located at the focus
Three Laws of Planetary Motion

• Law of Equal Areas: an imaginary

line drawn from the center of the
sun to the center of the planet will
sweep out equal areas in equal
intervals of time
Three Laws of Planetary Motion

• Law of Harmonies: the ratio of squares of

the periods of the two planets is equal to
the ratio of cubes of their average
distances from the sun
Galileo Galilei

• Discovered 4 satellites of Jupiter

• The planets are just like the earth. They look

like circular disks.

• Venus orbits the sun-source of light. Like

moon it also has phases

• Venus appears in full phase, farthest from

the earth

• Moon’s surface is not smooth. There are

mountains, crater and plains which he
thought as bodies of water

• Suns had sunspots—dark regions due to lower

temperature
Isaac Newton

• Formalized the concept of inertia-

proposed by Galileo

• Conceptualized the force of gravity-a

force that holds the heavenly bodies
in its orbits

• Provided explanation for the

elliptical orbit. Ex: the planet moves
forward in its orbit due to gravity

• Thus, orbit is the combination of

forward and centripetal force