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5.9 Ancient Astronomers Timeline

By christinaaguirre
  • 150 BCE

    Claudius Ptolemy

    Claudius Ptolemy
    He was the first to say that Earth is at the center of a vastly larger celestial sphere that revolves at a perfectly uniform rate around Earth, carrying with it the stars, planets, Sun, and Moon—thereby causing their daily risings and settings. It helps us to differentiate our days and nights.
  • 85 BCE

    Eratosthenes

    Eratosthenes
    He first to calculate the tilt of the Earth's axis. Eratosthenes also calculated the distance from the Earth to the Moon and to the Sun. This helps us figuring out the season and where the sun hits on each season and overall how we revolve around the sun
  • Period: 85 BCE to

    Astronomers Discovery

  • 1497

    Nicolaus Copernicus

    Nicolaus Copernicus
    He established the concept of a heliocentric solar system, in which the sun, rather than the earth, is the center of the solar system. It helps us advance more in what our solar system is like and what we revolve around
  • 1560

    Tycho Brahe

    Tycho Brahe
    He predicted the total eclipse on the sun. It offers a unique opportunity to study aspects of the sun like its corona.

  • Johannes Kepler

    Johannes Kepler
    He discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. This helps us know Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion which can determine how planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun as a focus, how a planet covers the same area of space in the same amount of time no matter where it is in its orbit, and how a planet's orbital period is proportional to the size of its orbit.

  • Sir Isaac Newton

    Sir Isaac Newton
    He was the first to make a reflecting telescope but most importantly the Laws of Motion. This determine an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it, the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration and, when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction.

  • Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein
    He discovered that astronomy and cosmology was the development of the theory of relativity which eventually led to an explanation of the origin of the universe. This leads us all to the beginning of time of how the universe was created and what was apart of it.