Astronomy 2

Overview of the Universe

Winter 2006

1. Lectures on Greek Astronomy

Joe Miller
The earliest days of
astronomy:
1. It was dark at night! No
artificial lighting.
2. The sky is very impressive.
3. Certain behaviors and patterns
became obvious:
•The concept of the celestial sphere.
The sky appeared to be a huge sphere
turning on an axis. There was a north
and south pole and an equator. Stars
rose in the east and set in the west
as if they were attached to this vast
they don’t move with respect to one
another, but remain fixed as if
attached to the celestial sphere.
Hence their name: the FIXED STARS.

Various patterns or groups of stars

were identified and given names by
all cultures. Today we call these
constellations, but they have no
scientific meaning. In some cases
elaborate stories were developed
about large groups of
constellations.

The same group of stars was observed

to rise about 4 minutes earlier each
Remember: same
stars rise 4
minutes earlier
each day. Why?
Because the earth
goes around the
sun.

4 minutes/day x
365 days = 1460
minutes.

But the day is

1440 minutes
long.

Actually stars
rise a few
seconds less than
4 minutes earlier
each day and it
takes the earth
365.25 to go
around the sun
How did the Greeks make sense
of all this?
• They assumed that the earth is at the center
of the universe- the geocentric theory.
• They believed that the stars were attached
to an extremely large sphere- the celestial
sphere.
• The celestial sphere must rotate once a day
around the earth, carrying around it with it
the sun and moon.
• The sun and moon must slowly drift with
respect to the celestial sphere over the
course of a month (moon) and year (sun).
Not all stars were fixed! A few
moved around and were called
“wanderers” or “planets” in Greek.

From night to night they gradually

drifted in the sky relative to the
stars, generally toward the east.
But occasionally they stop their
eastward motion and reverse
direction, moving toward the west.
This is called retrograde motion.

For the Greeks, who believed in

uniform circular motions,
retrograde motions were a horrible
problem.
The solution: epicycles!!

If the planets travel on small

circles (epicycles)attached to the
big circles (deferents), and the
speeds are adjusted properly,
retrograde motion can be
established.
Aristotle (?384-322 BCE)

• Argued that the moon must be

spherical -he understood the phases
of the moon.
• Argued the world was spherical for
several reasons.
– Traveling south brought new
constellations into view.
– He understood eclipses, and the
shadow of the earth on the moon
always had a curved edge.
– Elephants!
Aristotle believed in the
geocentric picture picture.
Why?
• The earth was too big to rotate
once a day. It would fly apart.
• Stars did not show parallaxes
during the year, which they must
if the earth goes around the sun.
This argument was conclusive for
most people. The only way out:
the stars must be very far away!
Aristarchus (?310-230 BCE)

• Proposed that the earth went around the

sun. The stars were very far away, and
thus no parallaxes could be observed.
Parallax is an apparent shift in a
star’s position caused by the motion of
the earth around the sun.
• Attempted to measure relative distance
of sun and moon. Clever, but wrong. He
found the sun’s distance was 20 times
the moon’s distance.
Eratosthenes (?276-195 BCE)

• Measured the size of the earth

and got it right to about 1%!!!
(We think.)
• The basic assumption was that the
sun was very far away compared to
the size of the earth, so that
the sun’s rays hitting the earth
could all be considered parallel
to one another.
360°
°
= 51.4. You would have to go 51.4 times the distance of
7
Syene to Aleandria, D, to go around the world. That is,

51.4D = circumference of world = C and

C
= r, the radius of the earth.
2π

Example : D = 486 miles 51.4D = 25000 miles

r = 4000 miles.
Hipparchus- the greatest Greek
astronomer
• Builder of excellent instruments to measure
positions of stars. Led to excellent star catalog.
• Produced extensive tables of the sun, moon, and
planet positions.
• Hypothesized that the “fixed” stars might actually
move. Devised a method to check this over centuries.
• Predicted eclipses, including solar ones: their time
and place. Very hard to do!
• Invented trigonometry because he needed it.
• Measured length of year with error estimate of 15
minutes. He was accurate to 6 minutes!
• Greatest discovery: precession.
Claudius Ptolemy (c. 150 AD)

• The Almagest “Greatest Work”- a

great synthesis of knowledge of
his time.
• Became the standard text on
astronomy for 15 centuries.
• Elaborate presentation of the
geocentric system, also called
the Ptolemaic System.