Ten astronomers that impacted History

  • Period: Dec 14, 1546 to

    Tycho Brahe

    He noticed a star in space that had not been before. He worked on creating more advanced technology so he could figure out where that new star had come from. His studies and devices helped start the Scientific Revolution.
  • Period: 1572 to

    Galileo Galilei

    He not only helped prove that the sun was the center of our solar system, but he also studied things like speed, velocity, and gravity. He also invented the thermoscope and lots of different military compasses.
  • Period: to

    Johannes Kepler

    Kepler developed the three Laws of Planetary Motion after working with Tycho, and publishing his works after his death. The three laws are as followed:
    1.The orbit of a planet about the Sun is an ellipse with the sun at one focus.
    2. A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal intervals of time.
    3. The square of a planet’s sidereal period around the Sun is directly proportional to the cube of the length of its orbits' semi-major axis.
  • Period: to

    Isaac Newton's study of gravity

    He'd been working on his theories of gravity from all the way back in 1665. He began to study planets and stars in 1679, and how gravity affected them. A new book of studies, called The Principia, was published in 5 July 1687 and displayed Newton's three universal laws of motion.
  • Period: to

    Isaac Newton's study of light

    During his time of teaching about optics, he studied light and the light spectrum. He showed how light held colors and how objects displayed the colors to our eyes. He invented a telescope that used reflecting lenses, later known as the first reflecting telescope. He published Opticks in 1704, which explained his study of lights and colors.
  • Period: to

    Charles Messier

    He first started discovering Nebulae when studying comets. Nebulae were often mistaken as comets. He began keeping records of them and moved on from them back to his study of comets, as he saw them as nothing important. We later used those documents to track the nebulae.
  • Period: to

    William Herschel

    Not only did he make powerful telescopes, but he also discovered Uranus, a few of Uranus and Neptune's moons, and that stars live in binary systems.
  • Edmond Halley

    Through his studies, he found that the comet of 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682 were in fact the same one and that it would come back around in 1758. He died before it could, but he was still proven correct. The comet was named in his honor.
  • Period: to

    Annie Jump Cannon

    Cannon developed the Harvard spectral system, which classified stars by more than just their temperature and color. She also inspired more women to work in astronomy in a time where men were favoured to do work.
  • Period: to

    Edwin Powell Hubble

    He created names for the three types of nebulae, elliptical, irregular, and spiral. He also found that the further away the nebula was, the more red shifted it appeared to be.
  • Period: to

    Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

    She discovered that the sun, and all other stars, were not like the planets, and were actually made of helium and other gases.
  • Sources

    wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
    wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
    wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
    allinonehighschool.com/brahe-and-kepler/
    wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
    space.com/16095-famous-astronomers.html
    astronomy.com/science/meet-20-great-astronomers-who-made-the-history-books/
    underluckystars.com/blog/10-famous-astronomers-you-should-know/
    astronomytrek.com/10-most-influential-astronomers-of-all-time/