History of Astronomy

What is the difference between a refracting and reflecting telescope?

323 BCE

A refracting telescope has two lenses that focus the light to make an object seem closer than it actually is. A reflecting telescope uses and focuses light together to create an image. The problem with reflecting telescopes is that for it to work, it would have to be so big that you can sit inside of it. This is why the telescope built by William Hershel was so big. [Sorry I if I put this in the wrong place, I could not find it on the rubric or on Canvas, and I seemed to miss it in class]

Aristotle

322 BCE

Aristotle, also known as the grandfather of time, studied under Plato. He believed in the Geocentric universe, and that the planets and stars (besides Earth) were perfect spheres.

Ptolemy

168 BCE

Virtually nothing is known about Ptolemy, besides that he believed that earth is the center if the universe.

Copernicus

1543

In 1532, Copernicus published the book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" which translates to "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres". He introduced the idea that planets rotated around the sun, and not the Earth.

Tycho Brahe

1601

Tycho Brahe was a Danish nobleman and Astronomer. He helped present the idea that the planets revolved around the sun and not the Earth.

Hans Lippershay

1619

Lippershay was traditionally credited with creating the telescope in 1608, obtaining a patent for 30 years on the product. He was born in 1570, and died in 1619.

Johannes Kepler

1630

Kepler was a German astronomer who was well known for finding the major laws of planetary motion (the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus, 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 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

1642

Using his telescope, Galileo made many observations of the universe. He believed in Copernicus's theory of the rotating planets. He was most known for finding 6 moons on Jupiter with his telescope.

Giovanni Cassini

1712

Cassini was an astronomer at Panzano Observatory and a professor at the University of Bologna. In Astronomy he was well known for locating Saturn's moons. He was born in 1625 and died in 1712.

Sir Isaac Newton

1724

Sir Isaac Newton was born in 1643, and died in 1724. He was known for creating calculus, and optics. In astronomy, he is most known for the development of the laws of gravity.

William Herschel

1822

Herschel was a British/ German astronomer who was born in 1783 and died in 1822. He was well known for finding the planet Uranus and its moons, formulating the theory of stellar evolution, and was widely credited as the founder of sidereal astronomy.

Percival Lowell

1916

Lowell was born in 1855 and died in 1916. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, and started the effort to find Pluto (Pluto was found 14 years after his death.)

Karl Jansky

1950

Karl Jansky was an American radio engineer and physicist who is considered one of the founding fathers of radio astronomy. He was the first person to discover radio waves coming from Mars. Jansky was born in 1905 and died in 1950.

Edwin Hubble

1953

Hubble was an American astronomer that was born in 1889 and died in 1953. He was well known for discovering that the "Clouds of light" that were seen in space were actually separate galaxies from our own. Hubble was also known for establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy.

Albert Einstein

1955

Einstein was known for showing how mass and energy are equivalent, and for the theory of relativity.

Sputnik

1957

Sputnik Was the first man made satellite to go into space. It orbited for three weeks until its batteries died, and then 2 more months before falling back into the atmosphere.

John Glenn 1962

1962

John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. After 4 hours and 56 minuted, he had circled the globe 3 times in his space capsule Friendship 7.

Ejnar Hertzsprung

1967

Hertzsprung was a Danish- American chemist and astronomer. He was born in 1873 and died in 1967.Hertzsprung, along with Henry Norris Russell, created the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. He was well known for identifying the different types of stars.

Yuri Gagarin

1968

Gagarin was a cosmonaut and Soviet pilot. He was the first human to enter Outer Space traveling in the Vostok spacecraft. When he re-entered earths atmosphere, he died.

Neil Armstrong 1969

1969

Neil Armstrong was among the first men to walk the moon in 1969. He was born in 1930 and died in 2012. The men who walked on the moon with him were Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and Michael Collins.

The Apollo program

1972

The Apollo program (Also known as Project Apollo) was the third program that sent humans into space. In 1969 the program successfully sent out three men into space and onto the moon.

First Space Shuttle Flight

1981

The first space shuttle was launched exactly 20 years after the first space flight with men in it was launched. In the orbiter Colombia, astronauts John W. Young, commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot launched from Kennedy Space Center.

Mars Pathfinder Expedition

1996

Pathfinder was launched on December 4th in Mars' Ares Vallis on July 4 the next year. Pathfinder is a robotic rover (The first) that is on Mars. Its primary job is to gather data and make scientific observations.

Cassini Orbiter

1997

The Cassini orbiter was a product of the The Cassini–Huygens mission. NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency collaborated to sent Cassini to Saturn. At Saturn Cassini studied the planet's rings, natural satellites, system, and Saturn itself.