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322 BCE
Aristotle
384-322 Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher and scientist. He was a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander The Great. Later, he then made his own school called Lyceum. He contributed a geocentric model for the universe saying the moon and the planets move around the Earth. He believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system and that Earth was much smaller than stars. Aristotle made significant and lasting contributions to almost every aspect of human knowledge. -
170
Ptolemy
Born 100-170 AD scientists believe in Egypt, but later conquered the Romans. His most famous work is the Almagest, which is an astronomy textbook and star catalogue. The book taught students how to predict the location of any heavenly body at anytime anywhere in the Earth using his mathematical model of planet movements. He presented his models in the form of data tables, using these tables you could also predict eclipses. -
1543
Copernicus
Born 1473-1543 AD Torun, Poland. He proposed that the planets revolved around the sun rather than the earth being the middle. To add to his central theory he also believed that the Earth rotates daily on its axis and revolves the sun. In 1514 he distributed a book to his friends that set out his view of the universe. After he finished his first manuscript in his book he showed a layout of the solar system and path of the planets. Many people denied his theory. -
Tycho Brahe
Born 1546-1601 AD in Denmark. Brahe was one of the most accurate celestials of his time and challenged the belief in how the universe was organized. He was one of the individuals whose work helped the belief of a heliocentric model of the universe, with the sun at the center. Although Brahe did believe that the Earth was motionless and the center of the universe, his observations proved wrong. -
Hans Lippershey
Born 1570-1619 in Wesel, Germany. He was a dutch eyeglass maker and many believe he was the first inventor of the telescope. One story of how he invented the telescope is that two children were playing with lenses in his shop and when they observed they saw that a vane on a nearby church appeared to be larger and clearer. Hans later tried himself then put a tube and called it a “kijker.” Even though he did not get a patent he still made very good money on it. -
Johannes Kepler
Born 1571- 1630 AD in Weil der Stadt, Germany. In 1596 Kepler wrote the first public defense of the copernican system. This was a very dangerous stance. He also admitted the defended the idea that planets orbit the sun and that their paths weren’t perfect circles. Kepler also realized that the planet would move slower if it was farther away from the sun as well as the time it takes to orbit the sun is connected to their distance. -
Galileo Galilei
1564- 1642 AD in Pisa, Italy. He was considered the father of modern science and made major contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, cosmology, math, and philosophy. In 1609 Galileo built his first telescope improving upon a dutch design. He discovered 4 new stars which turned out to be moon orbiting Jupiter. With his improved telescope he also studied other planets such as the rings of Saturn and the phases of Venus. -
Difference Between Refracting and Reflecting Telescope
A reflector telescope uses two mirrors instead of two lenses. Light from an object enters the telescope tube and is reflected off a curved mirror at the end of the tube. A second, small, flat mirror in the middle of the tube reflects this image to the eyepiece. A refractor telescope is a type of optical telescope that uses a lense as its objective to form an image. The refractor is better for observing planets and the moon. -
Giovanni Cassini
Born 1625-1712 AD in perinaldo, italy. Using a method developed by Galileo, Cassini was the first to make successful measurements of longitude. One of his first measurements was to measure the size of France. In 1675 he discovered the Cassini division in the rings of Saturn. Him and Robert Hooke also share credit for the discovery of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Born 1643-1724 AD in Woolsthorpe, England. Newton is known as the most original and influential theorist in the history of science. He discovered the binomial theorem, new methods for expansion of infinite series, and his direct and inverse method of fluxions. Newton also invented infinitesimal calculus and a new theory of light and color. Newton determined that white light was a composite of all the colors on the spectrum, and he also said that light was composed of particles instead of waves. -
William Herschel
Born 1738-1822 in Hanover, Germany. Herschel is the founder of sidereal astronomy for observing the heavenly bodies. He also found Uranus and its two moons including a theory of stellar evolution. Herschel later studied the nature of nebulae and discovered that all nebulae were formed of stars. Along with his discoveries he discovered two moons of Saturn. He maintained that the solar system is moving through space and found the direction, also suggested the milky way was in the shape of a disc. -
Percival Lowell
Born 1855-1916 AD in boston, massachusetts. Determined to prepare for the Martian opposition, he chose Flagstaff, Arizona. There he built the Lowell Observatory on Mars hill. Lowell discovered canals of oases on Mars. He also calculated that variations in the orbit of Neptune and Uranus was caused by a ninth planet. After founding that pluto is a dwarf planet and too small to affect the orbit of neptune and uranus Lowell’s measurements were completely coincidental but he still started the idea. -
Karl Jansky
Born 1905-1950 in Norman, Oklahoma. He created an antenna designed to receive radio waves. Jansky spent over a year investigating the third type of static. It rose and fell once a day, leading Jansky to think at first that he was seeing radiation from the Sun. Eventually he figured out that the radiation was coming from the Milky Way and was strongest in the direction of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation of Sagittarius. This antenna was name Jansky’s Merry-Go-Round. -
Edwin Hubble
Born 1889- 1953 in Missouri. After the 100 in Hooker telescope Hubble spent many cold night sitting at the telescope trying to prove to Harlow Shapley that there was more to the universe than just the milky way. 1923 Hubble spotted what he first thought was a nova star flaring up dramatically in the M31 "nebula" in the constellation of Andromeda. He discovered that it was far outside the milky way and that itself was a galaxy. This is how he discovered the cosmos. -
Albert Einstein
Einstein produced various articles. In one of them he applied the quantum theory to light in order to explain the photoelectric effect. Then in another one of his articles he contained experimental proof of the existence of atoms. A fourth paper concerned the fundamental relationship between mass and energy. Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 expressed this relationship. Einstein later published the general theory of relativity this theory found that gravity and motion can affect time and space. -
Sputnik
History changed 1957 when the soviet union finally launched the sputnik. The sputnik is the world's first artificial satellite. The satellite orbited for 3 weeks before its batteries died and 2 months as it slowly fell back into the atmosphere. Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
In 1905 he published his first newspaper on astronomy, proposing a relationship between the spectrum and luminosity of stars. Hertzsprung plotted the absolute magnitude of stars in relation to their luminosity, classification, and temperature. He and his partner Henry Norris Russell created the Diagram together. -
Yuri Gagarin
born 1934-1968 in a small village near Moscow, Russia. Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. Of 200 Russian air force fighter pilots he was selected. On April 12, 1961, at 9:07 a.m. Moscow time, the Vostok 1 spacecraft blasted off from the Soviets' launch site. Over the course of 108 minutes, Vostok 1 traveled around the Earth once, reaching a maximum height of 203 miles. Gagarin was later killed by testing a jet fighter aircraft. -
The Apollo program
The apollo program was a designed program meant to land humans on the moon and bring them safely back to Earth. The mission such as Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 achieved their goal. The six mission that landed on the moon returned a wealth of scientific data. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
Discussions on developing a reusable spacecraft began in earnest in 1966, when NASA was looking to figure out what programs would come after Apollo. Some compromises were made in the design. In 1981 Columbia was the first shuttle to reach space. In total Columbia flew 28 missions in its lifetime, logging more than 300 days in space and it flew several productive science missions in the 1990s and 2000s. -
Mars Pathfinder Expedition
The Mars pathfinder was launched december 4, 1996 and landed on Mars’ Ares Vallis July 4, 1997. 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. The Pathfinder not only accomplished this goal but also returned a lot of data and outlived its primary design life. The rover carried instruments for scientific observations. It also used an innovative method to enter the martian atmosphere. -
Cassini Orbiter
On October 15, 1997 a seven year journey began when they launched the Cassini Orbiter and its attached huygens probe. Cassini completed its four year primary mission in 2008 and went on to perform dozens more flybys of Titan, Enceladus and Saturn's other icy moons. The spacecraft has given back to Earth hundreds of gigabytes of scientific data. -
Neil Armstrong
Born 1930-2012 in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Armstrong was a training pilot in the Navy and after serving in the korean war, he joined the organization that would become NASA. In 1962 he was command pilot for his first mission. He was also spacecraft commander for Apollo 11 which was the first manned lunar mission. On that mission Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. -
John Glenn
Born 1921-2016 in Cambridge, Ohio. Glenn was a marine pilot and in 1959 he was selected for project Mercury astronaut training. He was later selected for the first orbital flight in, and in 1962 he made three orbits around Earth. Glenn was the first US astronaut to orbit Earth. Later in 1998 Glenn went back into space and made history again as the oldest person in space. -
NASA Spacecraft Explores Outermost Edge of Solar System
One of the most distant spacecrafts successfully explored the farthest and most primitive objects that humans have ever seen. At 4 billion miles from Earth, Ultima Thule is the farthest-away location in space scientists have ever viewed up close. It is a rocky relic from the solar system’s early days. Ultima Thule is 1% the size of pluto, and new horizons had to get four times closer to get images of it.
