-
322 BCE
Aristotle
Aristotle was sent to study Philosophy with Plato. Aristotle believed in a geocentric universe, he also believed that other planets and stars were perfect spheres. Aristotle knew how the moon phases occurred and knew how eclipses worked. Aristotle believed the earth did not move and stayed at rest since he believed it took force to make an object move. -
168
Ptolemy
Ptolemy also believed in a geocentric universe. Ptolemy’s system included over 80 epicycles to explain how the sun, moon, and planets moved. Ptolemy studied the theory of the sun and confirmed the length of the tropical year, found the length of seasons, and studied his theory of the moon. -
1543
Copernicus
Copernicus didn’t believe in a geocentric universe and instead believed the sun was the center of our universe. He thought the rotation of Earth accounted for the setting and rising sun. Copernicus made a layout of the way he believed our solar system looked. He thought that the Earth’s motion caused the retrograde movement. -
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe had a different vision of our solar system. He believed the moon and sun orbited the Earth and every other planet orbited the sun. Tycho thought that supernova’s never changed with regard to surrounding stars, and comet orbited past the path of the moon, which he thought it meant the heavens never change. -
Hans Lippershey
Hans invented the telescope and microscope. Hans invention spread throughout Europe and many fellow experimenters built their own telescopes. Hans kept working on improving his invention throughout the rest of his life. -
Johannes Kepler
Johannes defended the idea that the Sun was the center of the solar system and the planets orbited the sun. Johannes revealed that the path the planets made were not perfect circles, they traveled in stretched out circles that he named ellipses. He also realized that the farther planets were from the Sun the slower they moved. Kepler and Brahe worked together studying astronomy. -
Galileo
Galileo was the first to see the craters of the moon, he tracked Venus’s phases, and he discovered sunspots. He discovered the four massive moons of Jupiter, and was puzzled by the rings of Saturn. Galileo made the first recorded studies of Neptune. -
Giovanni Cassini
Giovanni was the first to discover Saturn’s moons, the first to make successful measurements of longitude lines. Cassini discovered the Cassini division of the rings of Saturn. He shares credit for the discovery of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Newton studied the logic of gravity. Newton wrote three laws of motion, the first one was, how objects move at the same velocity unless another force acts upon it, the second one was he provided a calculation for how forces interacted, the last one was for every action in nature there is an equal one and opposite reaction. Newton was the one who calculated the universal law of gravity. -
William Herschel
Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and had named it, Georgium Sidus, it was later renamed. Over the span of 20 years, he had seen/discovered 2,500 new neublae and star clusters. He discovered two moons around Uranus, he also discovered Saturn’s sixth and seventh moons. -
Percival Lowell
Percival built an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona to study Mars. Lowell spent quite a while studying canals on Mars, although years later it was proven there was no canals on Mars. Lowell also mapped some features on Venus, but all his claims were proven wrong. -
Karl Jansky
Jansky is considered one of the founding figures of radio astronomy. Jansky was the first to discover radio waves emanating from the milky way. Jansky built an antenna that could rotate and was built on a model t and invented radio astronomy by accident. -
Edwin Hubble
Hubble discovered when studying all the galaxies, that all the other galaxies are rushing away from us and don’t rush towards us, except for the Andromeda Galaxy. Hubble was the first to discover that all galaxies don’t sit stationary and actually move. His theory was proven right, and he was awarded a nobel peace prize. -
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein created an equation that helped explain the theory of relativity. Einstein went on an expedition to Africa and studied the position of stars during a total solar eclipse. Einstein was still working on how to unify all the forces in the universe in a single theory by the time of his death. -
Sputnik
Sputnik was a modified russian missile, sputnik weighed about 180 pounds. Sputnik circled Earth for 21 days, and broadcasted a constant beep for radios from its four antennas. Sputnik the was first satellite in space, which let the Russians win the space race. -
John Glenn
In the year, 1962, John Glenn became the first american to orbit Earth. Glenn was the fifth person in space, but third american to go to space. Glenn orbited the Earth three times in a little under five hours. Glenn flew the Friendship 7 Mission. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
Ejnar found the relationship between the colours of stars and their true brightness, as well as dwarf and giant stars must exist. He discovered the spectrum of a star is based off its absolute magnitude. He also measured about a million positions of binary stars. -
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Gagarin was the first man to go to space ever! He orbited Earth once in the span of 108 minutes. Yuri made history by going to space in 1961 and came back to Earth alive still. Yuri was sent into space by the soviet union (same group who sent sputnik). -
Neil Armstrong
On July 20th, 1969 three astronauts, flew to the moon. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins landed on the moon aboard the Apollo 11 mission. Armstrong took the first step on the surface of the moon ever, soon joined on the moon by fellow astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. -
The Apollo Program
The Apollo Program was created to fly humans to the moon and safely bring them back to Earth. There was six missions that successfully landed on the moon. These missions brought back samples from the moon and did experiments on the moon. The apollo project was led by Nasa and achieved putting the first human on the moon. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
The flight that took off on April, 12th 1981 was launching the first space shuttle into space. The mission was called STS-1. This was the first reusable spacecraft. This spacecraft was designed to launch like a rocket and land like an airplane. It was in space for two days and came back on April, 14th. -
Mars Pathfinder Expedition
In 1996 a little rover was sent to Mars, it was the first robotic device to touch the surface of Mars. The rover was 23 pounds and carried instruments for scientific observations. The rover was controlled by people on Earth, Nasa. The rover never returned back to Earth, but retrieved more data than expected. -
Cassini Orbiter
The Cassini Orbiter also known as, Cassini-Huygens, was a orbiter sent to study Saturn and its system. The Cassini was a collaboration between NASA, the European space agency, and Italy’s space agency. The spacecraft arrived in the system of Saturn in 2004. The Cassini studied the rings of Saturn, icy moons, and collected a lot of data for the people on Earth. -
Reflecting/Refracting
A reflecting telescope doesn’t use two lenses, instead it used two mirrors. Refracting telescopes use two lenses. Refractor telescopes are meant to gather light from the thing it is focusing on such as, a star or planet. A reflector has light bounce off the mirrors. -
Current Astronomy Event
On the night of January 31, 2019, the moon was a crescent. The moon and venus will have the same right ascension, the moon will be 25 days old. Venus is 0.1° south of the Moon. The moon is 17% visible from Earth on this night.
