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400 BCE
Refracting and Reflecting telescopes.
The difference between these two telescopes is that the reflecting telescope uses two mirrors instead of lenses. A refracting telescope uses the light to center to a focus. -
322 BCE
Aristotle
384-322 BC/BCE: Aristotle created the geocentric model.The geocentric model was an acient understanding of astronomy. This said that all of the planets and the sun revolved around the Earth. Two observations supported this theory. -
168
Ptolemy
100-168 Astronomer and Philosopher who supported the Geocentric theory. He wrote a 13 part book called the Almagest, and the order of planets in his theory was Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and then Saturn. Almost nothing is known about his life. -
1543
Copernicous
1473 - 1543: Copernicus was the creator of the heliocentric universe. This said that the Sun was the center of the solar system, and not the Earth. This disproved Ptolemy's geocentric theory, which had been proved for more than one thousand years. -
Tycho Brahe
1546 - 1601: Tycho Brahe was the few people who overturned the heliocentric theory. He then, later, before the telescope, saw a supernova, which he wrote a paper about and published it. -
Johannes Kepler
1571 - 1630: Johannes Kepler discovered that the planets move in order with the sun, that the time necessary to traverse a planet is proportional to the central body and the arc, and that there is an exact relationship between the planets time and their cubes of their radii. -
Galileo
1564 - 1642: Galileo did not invent the telescope, but improved upon it. He was an Italian scientist who made many experiments, such as an experiment that proved that everything fell at the same speed, despite mass. -
Giovanni Cassini
1625 - 1712: Giovanni Cassini was the first to discover Saturn's moons, and he was apart of the Cassini astronomy family. In 1997, a spacecraft was named after him for discovering the moons. -
Isaac Newton
1643 - 1724: After he was hit on the head with an apple, Isaac Newton began to understand the forces of gravity. He was responsible for creating the Three Laws of Gravity, and for being a philosopher. -
William Herschel
1732 - 1822: William Herschel was the astronomer that discovered Uranus. When he discovered it, he first thought that it was a comet. He also discovered the evolution of the stars. -
Percival Lowell
1855 - 1916: Percival Lowell had to do with many things in astronomy. He had studies Mars, built space telescopes, and had created a theory of Pluto. -
Karl Jansky
1905 - 1950: Karl Jansky was hire to inspect slight transmission issues through telephone, where he then discovered that there was only one unidentifiable problem. There was the interference from space. -
Edwin Hubble
1889 - 1953: Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, was the first to demonstrate other galaxies other than the Milky Way, profoundly changing the way we look at the universe. -
Albert Einstein
1879 - 1955: Albert Einstein is known by everybody for creating the equation for relativity, E = mc2. This is know by everybody, even those who don't understand physics. -
Sputnik
Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union, was the first satellite to go into orbit around the Earth. It flew for 3 weeks, until the batteries inside of it lost all of their power, and flew for months silently before falling into the atmosphere. -
John Glenn
1921 - 2016: John Glenn was one of the Mercury Seven, who were military test pilots who would eventually be the first of America's astronauts. He was also the first American man to orbit the Earth. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
1873 - 1967: Ejnar Hertzsprung classified stars according to their brightness, which is an accomplishment toward modern astronomy today. -
Yuri Gagarin
1934 - 1968: Yuri Gagarin was the first person on Earth to take a trip into space. He was aboard a spacecraft named Vostok, where he then completed an orbit around the world. -
Neil Armstrong
1930 - 2012: Neil Armstrong was the first man to land on the moon. He flew on the spacecrafts named Apollo 11 and Gemini 8. He made the famous "One step for man, one giant leap for mankind" quote. -
The Apollo Program
1963 - 1972: The Apollo program was also known as the Apollo project, was used for taking voyages to the moon, and each spacecraft consists of a command module, a service module, a crew's quarters and a lunar module -
First space shuttle flight
The first space shuttle flight was in 1981. The Space Shuttle Flight program was the fourth human spaceflight program. The program was made to put manned space shuttles into orbit. -
Mars Pathfinder Exposition
The Mars Pathfinder is an American robot made specifically to go to Mars and collect data and information, such as taking photos, taking chemical, atmospheric, and other bits of information. -
Cassini Orbiter
The Cassini Orbiter was made to take accurate measurements of other planets and their features i.e. Saturn's rings. Then, it entered Titan's murky atmosphere, a moon of Saturn, which is the most distant landing of any spacecraft to date. -
Snapshot of a Supernova (current astronomy event)
Recently, a planetary nebulae named ESO 577-24 had become a planetary nebula. A nebulae like ESO 577-24 will eventually eject its mass and become a white dwarf core. This kind of event lasts 10,000 years.
