History of Astronomy

  • 322 BCE

    Aristotle

    Aristotle
    Aristotle is known for how you can see the moon, the faces of the moon, and the eclipses of the earth. He believed in the geocentric, that the stars and the moons are spheres and Earth is not.
  • 168

    Ptolemy

    Ptolemy
    Ptolemy was a ancient astronomer, geographer, and mathematician who thought the earth was the center of the universe, that sun and every other planet revolved around it.
  • 1543

    Copernicus

    Copernicus
    Copernicus is the first astronomer to believe in the heliocentric solar system: a system in which the planets orbit the sun. Copernicus established this belief, and laid his model of the planets in the solar system and their paths.
  • 1570

    Hans Lippershey

    Hans Lippershey
    Hans Lippershey is the inventor of the telescope. He did not know how much his invention would effect the world but eventually it was very important.
  • Tycho Brahe

    Tycho Brahe
    Tycho Brahe was an alchemist, astrologer, astronomer. He supported the geocentric solar system. He made some of the most accurate observations of the planets positions.
  • Giovanni Cassini

    Giovanni Cassini
    Giovanni Cassini discovered four satellites of Saturn and pointed out Saturn's rings. He also had the first observations of Saturn's moons.
  • Johannes Kepler

    Johannes Kepler
    Johannes Kepler is famous for discovering the three laws of planetary motion; (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at on 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; and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits
  • Galileo

    Galileo
    Galileo made several discoveries with his telescope. He is mostly known for his discovery of Jupiter's huge four moons known as the Galilean moons:Io, Ganymade, Europa, Callisto. NASA named their mission to Jupiter after Gelileo
  • Sir Isaac Newton

    Sir Isaac Newton
    Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and gave a pure understand of optics. His most significant work would have to do with forces, and the laws of gravity.
  • William Herschel

    William Herschel
    William Herschel was credited as the founder of the sidereal astronomy for observing bodies. He also found Uranus the planet and its two moons, and formulated a theory of stellar evolution.
  • Percival Lowell

    Percival Lowell
    Pervical Lowell is best for known for the belief that there was life on Mars, and this has had a gigantic impact on the development of Science Fiction. He also predicted that their was an existence of a planet beyond the orbit of Neptune and initiated a search and ended up finding Pluto.
  • Karl Jansky

    Karl Jansky
    Karl Jansky discovered the radio wave energy and you can tune a radio to a specific wavelength or a frequency and listen to music. The radio receives these electromagnetic radio waves and converts them to mechanical vibrations in the speaker to create the sound waves
  • Edwin Hubble

    Edwin Hubble
    Edwin Hubble's research led to proving that the universe is expanding, by creating a classification system for galaxies that has been used for decades. He also with meticulous studies he proved the is existence of galaxies other than our own Milky Way.
  • Albert Einstein

    Albert Einstein
    Albert Einstein is famous for his theory of relativity which is a metric theory of gravitation. In 1921 he received a Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics and especially for his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.
  • Sputnik

    Sputnik
    Sputnik is the very first satellite which was launched into space by the Russians. It sent radio waves back to the space station and it was able to uncover many things about the atmosphere and the air thickness.
  • Yuri Gagarian

    Yuri Gagarian
    Yuri Gagarian was the first person to fly in space. He was orbited the earth a little more than once for 108 minutes in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. This Flight was on April 12, 1961
  • Ejnar Hertzsprung

    Ejnar Hertzsprung
    Enjar Hertzsprung classified types of stars by relating their colors to their brightness which is an accomplishment of fundamental importance to modern astronomy
  • The Apollo Program

    The Apollo Program
    The Apollo Program had a project called Project Apollo, and it's goals went beyond just landing on the moon, Project Apollo wanted to get to the moon and back safely.
  • The First Space Shuttle

    The First Space Shuttle
    Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space shuttle in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet to orbit the moon. It launched first on mission STS-1 on April 12, 1981, the first flight of the Space Shuttle Program.
  • Mars Pathfinder Expediton

    Mars Pathfinder Expediton
    Mars Pathfinder is an American robotic spacecraft that was landed on Mars, and dropped of a robotic rover, that would take pictures of Mars without people actually having to be there
  • Cassini Orbiter

    Cassini Orbiter
    The Cassini-Huygens mission was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to a send a probe to study Saturn the planet and its system, like its rings and natural satellites.
  • Difference Between Reflecting and Refracting Telescopes.

    Difference Between Reflecting and Refracting Telescopes.
    Reflecting uses two mirrors, when light from an object entered the telescope tube and is reflected off a curved mirror at the end of the tube. Refracting Telescopes used two lenses.
  • Neil Armstrong

    Neil Armstrong
    Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the moon. Commander Neil Armstrong was the very first person to set foot on the moon. Before he took his step, he said, "One small step for man, one huge leap for man kind."
  • John Glenn

    John Glenn
    John Glenn made history in 1962. On February 20, 1962 he became the first American to go into space and orbit the Earth. Glenn was blasted into space on Mercury's Friendship 7 spacecraft.
  • China lands on the dark side of the moon

    China lands on the dark side of the moon
    China's space program achieved a first: a landing on the "dark side" of the moon. The far side of the moon is a rare quiet place that is free from interference from radio signal from Earth. They were able to really see the dark side.