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322 BCE
Aristotle
384-322 Aristotle studied under Plato and believed in a geometric universe where the moon, stars and sun were perfect spheres and made of a new element called ether. when earth itself was not perfectly spherical and was made of only earth, fire, water, and air. He started his own school in Athens. He believed that everything revolved around the earth. The earth was the middle of the universe. -
168
Ptolemy
100-168 AD Ptolemy also believed that the earth was the center of the universe, but he did not study under plato. The word earth in Greek is "geo". so we consider this theory the geocentric. He had many of the same beliefs as Aristotle but they Aristotle studied under plato and Ptolemy did not. -
1543
Copernicus
1473-1543 Copernicus was the first to believe that the planets revolved around the sun. In 1532 he published his first manuscript of a book stating that the planets revolved around the sun. His book was called "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" or in English "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres". In simpler terms, he mean the planets revolve the sun. He was the first to lay out and publish a correct model of earths path along with all of the other planets in the solar system. -
Tycho Brahe
1546-1601 Tycho Brahe developed astronomical instruments to help him with his work in measuring stars and planets in their paths. Some things that he discovered were the Nova, the Comet, The orbital path, the Tycho planetary model. He also invented the armillary sphere, and the triangular sextant. -
Hans Lippershey
1570-1619 Hans Lippershey invented the first telescope and is sometimes given credit for the compound microscope. He was also an eyeglass producer in the Netherlands. He opened a spectacles shop in middleburg to make a living. -
Johnannes Kepler
1571-1630 He discover 3 main laws of planetary motion. (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”); and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits (the “harmonic law”). -
Galileo
1564-1642 Galileo discovered the 4 biggest moons of Jupiter. He also made several discoveries with the telescope. Galileo also supported an astronomer named Copernicus. -
Giovanni Cassini
1625-1712 He was involved in the first discoveries of Saturn's moons. He noted and did the division for Saturn's rings.He was considered one of the best mathematicians at this time. -
Sir Isaac Newton
1643-1724 Sir Isaac Newton created calculus, and he provided a clear explanation of optics. He was also an expert on forces, mainly gravitational forces. He not only studied gravity but he discovered the theory of gravity. -
William Herschel
1738-1822 He discovered Uranus, and founded the theory of stellar evolution. He built more than just one telescope in his time, he was a very accomplishes astronomer and composer of music. He was also credited the founder of sidereal astronomy for observing the heavenly bodies. While observing the night lit with stars through his self built telescope on March 13 1781, he noticed a different "star". He continued to observe it and saw that it orbited the sun. This "star" was called Uranus. -
Percival Lowell
1855-1916 He was a strong believer that there was life on mars. He founded an observatory up in Flagstaff Arizona to help get further information about life on Mars. He also believed that there were canals on the planet Mars. -
Edwin Hubble
1889-1953 He proved that there are galaxies other than our own milky way. He had a nick name " pioneer of the stars". His theory proved that the universe is expanding, and he a classification system for galaxies beyond ours. -
Karl Jansky
1889-1953 discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. He is considered one of the founding figures of radio astronomy. And he did the first systematic survey of radio waves from the sky. -
Albert Einstein
1879-1955 Albert is one of the most well known scientists / astronomers that lived. He had many great achievements such as special relativity, general relativity, mass energy equivalence (E=MC2), Brownian motion, Photoelectric effect, Einstein coefficients, Einstein solid, Equivalence principle, and so on. -
sputnik
1957 The Sputnik rocket was an unmanned orbital carrier rocket designed by Sergei Korolev in the Soviet Union, derived from the R-7 Semyorka ICBM. On 4 October 1957, it was used to perform the world's first satellite launch, placing Sputnik 1 into a low Earth orbit. fellow-traveller in Russian, was the first man-made object to go into orbit around the Earth and it marked the start of the space race between America and the Soviet Union. -
Yuri Gagarin
1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. Yuri had a plan not to land on earth in his space but get ejected and float down to earth. this plan worked out but late on he died in an aviation accident. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
1873-1967 He classified types of stars by relating their color to their absolute brightness. He also created the HR diagram- a graph that plots stars with their temperature against their luminosity, or the color of the stars against their absolute magnitude. -
The Apollo Program
1963-1972 The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third United States human program to have flight in space carried out by the National Space Administration, which succeeded in landing the first humans on the Moon. Several planned missions of the Apollo manned Moon landing program of the 1960s and 1970s were canceled for a variety of reasons, including changes in technical direction, the Apollo 1 fire, hardware delays, and budget limitations. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
1981 Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. It launched for the first time on mission STS-1 was the first flight of the Space Shuttle program. The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the and Space Administration, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo -
Mars Pathfinder Expedition
1996 It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander and the first-ever robotic rover to the surface of the red planet. Mars. It was also the first successful lander since the two Vikings landed on the red planet. -
Cassini Orbiter
1997 It was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The spacecraft was launched with two elements: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. It takes us to astounding worlds where methane rivers run to a methane sea and where jets of ice and gas are blasting material into space from a liquid water ocean that might harbor the ingredients for life. -
Neil Armstrong
1930-2012 Neil Armstrong made history by becoming the first man to walk on the moon. He developed a fascination with flight at an early age and earned his student pilot's license when he was 16. Serving as the mission's commander, Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module to the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, with Buzz Aldrin with him. He said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," as he made his famous first step on the moon. -
John Glen
1921-2016 Glenn was selected for the first orbital flight, and in 1962, on Friendship 7, he made three orbits around Earth. After his decorated service in the U.S. Marine Corps and NASA, Glenn went on to serve as U.S. Senator from his home state. -
Difference between refracting and reflecting telescopes
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.
