Ancient Astronomers

By kpthompson
  • 100 BCE

    Claudius Ptolemy

    Ptolemy enabled astronomers to make accurate predictions of planetary positions and solar and lunar eclipses.
  • 85 BCE

    Eratosthenes

    Eratosthenes was an important mathematician. He was the first to calculate the tilt of Earth's axis. His findings were discovered by Ptolemy to have incredible accuracy.
  • 1543

    Nicolaus Copernicus

    • Copernicus discovered that the Sun is stationary in the center of the universe and that the Earth spins around the Sun and makes a full spin in one day.
    • This occurred in 1473-1543
    • HIs discoveries are important because he's making history by being the first European man to discover that the Earth evolves around the sun.
  • 1571

    Johannes Kepler

    Kepler used basic mathematics to formulate the three laws of planetary motion. His first law states that planets have an elliptical orbit around the Sun. His second law states that planets move proportionally faster when they are closer to the Sun. His third law explains the relationship between the distance of a planet from the Sun and the amount of time it takes to orbit it.
  • Nov 11, 1572

    Tycho Brahe

    Tycho's first astronomical discovery was a bright star called SN 1572.

  • Sir Isaac Newton

    Newton made significant contributions to the field of astronomy when he invented his three laws of motion as well as his law of gravitation.

  • Albert Einstein

    Albert formed the theory of relativity which was an explanation for the origin of the universe from 1905 to 1915.