CLASSICAL ASTRONOMY

1. Ancient philosophers accepted as a first principle that the heavens

were perfect, so philosophers such as Plato argued that, because the
sphere was the only perfect geometrical form and carried a point on its
surface around in a circle, the heavens must move in a uniform circular
motion
. Accepted that Earth was the unmoving center of all motion
in the middle of a geocentric universe , they did not see the
shifting of the stars called parallax.
 CLASSICAL ASTRONOMY

3. The retrograde motion of the of the planets was very difficult to

explain using geocentrism and uniform circular motion
4. About 140 ce, Ptolemy preserved the principles of geocentrism and
uniform circular motion, but added epicycles deferents, and equants to
better predict the motions of the planet
 CLASSICAL ASTRONOMY

5. Claudius Ptolemy attempted to explain the motion of the

planets mathematically by devising a small circle the epicycle,
rotating along the edge of a larger circle, the deferent, that
enclosed the Earth. He even allowed the speed of the planets
to vary slightly as they circled a slightly off-center point
called equant.
 COPERNICAN REVOLUTION

• 1514, Copernicus wrote an essay proposing a model

of heliocentric universe in which the sun, not the
Earth, was the center
• Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun
 PLANETARY MOTION

• Problem of planetary motion was finally solved through the

work of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler
• Tycho developed his own model in which the sun and moon
circled Earth and the planets circled the sun
• Tycho’s great contribution was to compile detailed
observations over a period of 20 years that were later used by
Kepler
 PLANETARY MOTION
• Johannes Kepler inherited Tycho’s books observation and used
them to devise 3 laws of planetary motion:
1. planets follow ellipses
2. planets move faster when nearer the sun and slower
when further away
3. planet’s orbital period squared is proportional to the
semimajor axis of its orbit cubed
P2 =a2
y AU
 PLANETARY MOTION

• Rudolphine Table – could predict the positions of the

planets 10 to 100 times more accurately than previous
tables. Accuracy of this table was strong evidence that
both Kepler’s law of planetary motion and the Copernican
hypothesis for the place of Earth were correct
 GALELILEO GALILEI

• Used the newly invented telescope to observe the

heavens
• His discoveries of the phases of Venus, the Galilean
moons of Jupiter, the mountains of the moon, and other
phenomena helped undermine the Ptolemaic universe
 ISAAC NEWTON AND THE ORBITAL MOTION

• Discovered 3 laws of motion and the law of gravity which

made it possible to understand such phenomena as orbital
motion and the tides
• Gravity was mutual and universal, depends on the mass of
the bodies and the distance between them according to the
inverse square relation
HOW OUR UNIVERSE AND SOLAR SYSTEM
FORMED
 HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY

• Hypothesis - an idea or theory that is not proven but that leads to further study or
discussion
- an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument
• Theory - an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but is not known or
proven to be true
- a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of
principles offered to explain phenomena
 BIG BANG THEORY

• The universe was once very small and very hot, and then it
expanded over time until it reached its speak around 13.7
billion years ago
• Asserts that seconds after explosion, the surroundings were at
a high temperature of about 10 billion degrees Fahrenheit (5.5
billion celcius)with aggregates of fundamental particles such
as neutrons, electrons, and protons
 BIG BANG THEORY

• As the universe cooled in later phases, these particles

either combined with each other or decayed, the was
also said to continue to expand over the next 13
billion years until the present
 STEADY STATE THEORY

• Universe is always expanding in a constant average density, thus

matter continuously created to form cosmic or celestial bodies such
as stars and galaxy
• Older bodies that were formed were no longer easily observable as
a consequence of their huge distances and rate of recession
 STEADY STATE THEORY

• This theory further claims that the universe has no

beginning or end in time, and even though it is expanding,
its appearance remains the same over time
 COSMIC INFLATION THEORY

• Inflation refers to rapid space-time

• The early universe was a rapidly expanding bubble of
pure vacuum energy
• Did not have any matter or radiation
 COSMIC INFLATION THEORY

• After the expansion and cooling arising from this

inflation, the potential energy, the potential energy
converted into kinetic energy of matter and radiation
• Then big bang occurred because of the extremely hot,
dense condition of matter
 THE SOLAR NEBULA THEORY

2 kinds of hypotheses:
1. catastrophic – planets formed from some
improbable event such as the collision of sun and
another star
2. evolutionary – planets formed gradually and naturally as
the sun formed
 SOLAR NEBULA THEORY

• Solar nebula theory – supposes that planet

form in the rotating disks of gas and dust
around young stars
• Earth and other planets of the solar system
formed billions of years ago as the sun
condensed from a cloud of interstellar gas and
dust
 PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS

Planetesimal hypothesis
a star much bigger than the Sun passing by the
Sun and draws gaseous filaments from both out
which planetisimals were formed
(e.g. comet, star, protoplanet, interstellar cloud)
 PLANETESIMAL HYPOTHESIS

• The two major flaws of this type of hypothesis

include:
• 1) fails to explain how planets are formed (hot gas
from the sun/star expands and will not form planets);
• 2) this type of encounters are extremely rare
 PROTOPLANET HYPOTHESIS

•Protoplanet Hypothesis -

about 4.6 billion years ago, in the Orion arm of the

Milky Way galaxy, a slowly-rotating gas and dust cloud
dominated by hydrogen and helium starts to contract
due to gravity. As most of the mass move to the center
to eventually become a proto-Sun, the remaining
materials form a disc that will eventually become the
planets and momentum is transferred outwards.
 PROTOPLANET HYPOTHESES

•Due to collisions, fragments of dust and solid matter

begin sticking to each other to form larger and
larger bodies from meter to kilometer in size. These
proto-planets are accretions of frozen water,
ammonia, methane, silicon, aluminum, iron, and
other metals in rock and mineral grains enveloped in
hydrogen and helium.
•High-speed collisions with large objects destroys
much of the mantle of Mercury, puts Venus in
retrograde rotation.
 DUST-CLOUD THEORY

• when the fuel of the early star is used up, the ancient
stars died some violently leaving vast clouds of
interstellar gas and dust, one of these cloud laid dark
cold and silent for a very long time. Then over 4.5 billion
years ago it begun to collapse perhaps triggered by the
explosion of the nearby star. The cloud was pulled
inward by its own gravity into a flat spinning disc, at the
center a star begun to form from the left over matter
planets were taking shape
 REVOLUTION AND ROTATION

• A planet revolves around the sun but rotates on its axis

• Sun rotates with its equator inclined only 7.2° to Earth’s orbit
• Most of other planets’ equators are tipped less than 30 °
• Mercury is tipped 7.0° to Earth’s orbit, rest of the planets’ orbital
planes are inclined by no more than 3.4°
• Solar system is basically flat and disk shaped
 TWO KINDS OF PLANETS

• Terrestrial planet –small, rocky, dense, Earthlike

worlds (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Earth), no rings
and few moons
• Jovian planets – large and low density (Jupiter,
Uranus, Saturn, Neptune), all four have ring
systems and large family of moons
 COSMIC DEBRIS

• Asteroids – minor planets, small rocky worlds,

most of which orbit the sun in a belt between
Mars and Jupiter
• Kuiper belts objects-Gerard Kuiper, small dark
icy bodies orbiting the outer fringes of the solar
system beyond Neptune
Comet – orbit the sun in long, elliptical
orbits and become visible when the sun’s
heat vaporizes its ices and pushes the gas
and dust into a tail pointing away from the
sun.
 COSMIC DEBRIS

• Meteors-streak of light in the sky

• Meteoroid-in space, before its fiery plunge
• Meteorite-any part of meteoroid that survived its fiery
passage to Earth’s surface
THANK YOU!