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384 BCE
Aristotle
384-322 BC. Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher/scientist. Aristotle refuted Democritus' claim that the milky way was "those stars which are shaded by the Earth from the Suns rays" by pointing out that if, "the size of the sun is greater than that of the Earth and the distance of the stars from the Earth many times greater than that of the sun, then... the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them." -
100
Ptolemy
100-168 AD. Ptolemy was a Roman astronomer. Ptolemy created geometric models that he claimed to have derived from selected astronomical observations by his predecessors over a span of thousands of years. He presented these models in simple tables which were used to figure out the past and future of planets. He also created a useful tool called "handy tables" which recorded data needed to find the positions of the sun,moon,planets,stars, and eclipses of the sun and the moon. -
1473
Copernicus
1473-1543. Copernicus was an Astronomer that believed in Heliocentrism( that the sun is in the center of the universe). He wrote a book on it, despite his friends telling him to, he did not publish it. "The center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only the center towards which heavy bodies move and the center of the lunar sphere." -
1564
Tycho Brahe
1564-1601. Tycho Brahe was a Danish astronomer that discovered a variation of the Moon's longitude. He also discovered information about the lunar orbit. Tycho's lunar theory doubled the number of distinct lunar inequalities, relative to those anciently known, and reduced the discrepancies of lunar theory to about a fifth of their previous amounts. -
1564
Galileo
1564-1642. Galileo improved Hans Lippershey's telescope so it could see 30x better than one of an older model. next to Jupiter. He found that these were moons were moons when he saw that they were orbiting Jupiter. He named them "Medicean Stars". They were soon renamed "Galilean Stars". They were separately named "Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto" -
1570
Hans Lippershey
1570-1619. Hans had the first written records of the idea of the telescope. A telescope called the "refracted telescope" which he had sent in patent for in 1806. He was noticed and the idea of the telescope blossomed from his plans and blueprints. -
1571
Johannes Kepler
1571-1630. Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer who created laws of planetary movement. His laws were ignored by several astronomers such as Galileo and Rene Descartes. Luckily, one astronomer gave him a chance, and proved his theory correct. They observed the transit of Mercury on the date that he predicted. His prediction for Venus however was incorrect due to complications from the Rudolphine tables. Had he used a different method for his observation's prediction, he would have been right. -
Giovanni Cassini
1625-1712. Giovanni Cassini was an Italian astronomer. He went to the Panzano observatory for most of his research. Cassini observed and recorded surface markings on Mars.Cassini was also the first to observe all four of Saturn's moons. In addition to that discovery, he discovered the "Cassini division" of the rings on Saturn. Along with Robert Hooke, he discovered the Big Red Spot on Jupiter. He was the first to observe differential rotation within Jupiters atmosphere. -
Sir Isaac Newton
1643-1724. Isaac Newton was an English Astronomer who is most famous for his beliefs and theories on gravity. Who used these theories on the planets. He worked to prove the elliptical form of the planets. He sparked more of an interest in astronomy after witnessing a comet in the winter of 1680-1681. HE made a few theories on heliocentrism. -
William Herschel
1738-1822. William Herschel was British astronomer that mainly focused on finding double stars, stars that were visually close to each other. These stars would help figure out how stars moved. Other than double stars, he found stars he didn't think he would find, such as Binary stars and multiple stars, multiple stars are stars closely grouped together. He looked at the multiple stars often because they were easier to chart than double stars. -
Percival Lowell
1855-1916. Percival Lowell was for 15 years, this astronomer studied Mars intensively. He made incredible drawings of Mars, he was quickly recognized for this work, but also drew maps of Venus. He owned a telescope observatory up in Flagstaff, Arizona. The observatory is open to the public and is called the, Lowell Observatory. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
1873-1967. Ejnar Hertzsprung was an Danish Astronomer that discovered 2 asteroids, 1627 Ivar, and 1702 Kalahari. He proved stars that were thought to be fake and space debree, real. His greatest addition to the atronomical community was perhaps his way to seperate star types by lumonosity, stage in development, and special type. -
Albert Einstein
1879-1955. Einstein is most famous for his work with e=mc2, but he also worked with knoweledge on the universe. As evidence of the universe was not known at the time, He predicted the universe to be a dynamic, cantracting or expanding, universe. -
Edwin Hubble
1889-1953. Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time. He discovered that the universe was beyond our own, the milky way. He found a nebulae that was to far away from the milky away to be part of our own. He discovered that there indeed is more universes than ours, which was already a speculation at the time, but was exactly that. A speculation. He opened a new field of research with this discovery. -
Karl Jansky
1905-1950. Karl Jansky was an American astronomer who discovered radio waves in the milky wave. He built a radio tower that would measure waves, he catagorized three of the noises, but was intrested in the third noise the most. A few months of trying to find the source of the signal and he finally found it. He found that the milky way was hiding radio waves in its composition. Hids discovery was widely publicized, and he wrote a book on his discovery. -
John Glenn
1921-2016. John Glenn began reading everything he could about space when sputnik was launched. He was accapted into the space program, barely meeting the requirements. There were three groups, most promising astronauts were put in the first group. Not including Glenn. Glenn was rejected however, when the selected astronauts did not include him. -
Neil Armstrong
1930-2012. Neil Armstrong is famous for being the first man on the moon. Neil was selected for the program, and became an instant favorite. in 1969 he landed on the moon, taking the stepes, and saying, "Thats one small step for man, one large step for mankind" -
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagirin was the first man in space. He was a soviet pilot. He was exetremely fit, popular, and smart. making him a great pick for the program. He orbited Earth once. -
Stephan Hawking
1942-2018. Stephan Hawking is most famous for his work with black holes, and was known as the worlds smartest person. He knew how to reach out to kids about space travel, making a book called, "George and the blue moon". -
sputnik
- Sputnik was a Russian satalite sent into space. The launch of Sputnik scared Americans, and thoughts that scared them even more forced them to start funding money for building satalites to send into space themselves. The launch of Sputnik did not just launch Sputnik, it launched the great space race.
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The apollo program.
1963-1972. The Apollo program was the space program that landed the first man on the moon. The Apollo program's goal was to land a man on the moon, and bring him back to Earth safely. They did exactly that. The Apollo program used Apollo 11 to reach this goal, and this spacecraft worked like a charm. -
The first space shuttle flight
- The first space shuttle flight was on the shuttle, STS-1. It wad th efirst American space shuttle to carry a crew to space. And was a huge acheivement.
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Mars Pathfinder Expidition.
- The Mars Pathfinder "Rover Sojourner" was the first ever robotic rover to land on Mars. It gained impressive video footage and pictures. They were transported to Mars on a shuttle. It carried instruments for temperature taking, and scientific gear for other property collection.
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Cassini Orbiter
- The Cassini orbiter orbited Saturn, taking pictures of it's findings and of the rings. It took samples of the materiels and chemicals that made up Saturn's rings. Soon they had enough samples to run analysis's on Saturn.
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The difference of a Refractor telescope and a reflector
A reflector telescope uses two mirrors instead of two lenses. Isaac Newton developed this telescope to combat chromatic aberration (a rainbow seen around some objects viewed with a refractor telescope)Light from an object enters the telescope tube and is reflected off a curved mirror at the end of the tube.
