-
322 BCE
Aristotle
384-322. Aristotle was an ancient Greek scientist and philosopher. He is considered the "Father of Western Philosophy". He is considered one of the greatest thinkers in politics, philosophy, and ethics. Aristotle spent most of his life studying, teaching, and writing at his school, Lyceum. He went to Platonic Academy and was a student of Plato. Aristotle was the philosopher that invented Science. -
168
Ptolemy
100-168 AD. Ptolemy is an ancient mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. His full name is Claudius Ptolemy. Ptolemy is best known for believing that the Earth is the center of the Universe. -
1543
Copernicus
1473-1543. Copernicus was a mathematician and astronomer. Copernicus is best known for the idea of Heliocentric Solar System. The Heliocentric Solar System is a system in which the planets and planetary objects orbit the sun. His first manuscript "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" established that planets orbited the Sun instead of Earth. -
Tycho Brahe
1546-1601. Tycho Brahe was an astronomer and astrologer. He invented many instruments for developing astronomical instruments and in fixing the positions of stars. -
Hans Lippershey
1570-1619. Hans Lippershey was a dutch astronomer. He is known for inventing the telescope because he was the first to try to obtain a patent. -
Johannes Kepler
1571-1630. Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is best known for his laws of planetary motion and his books. His three laws are (1) All planets move about the Sun in elliptical orbits, having the Sun as one of the foci. (2) A radius vector joining any planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal lengths of time. (3) The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. -
Galileo
1564-1642. Galileo was a astronomer, physicist and engineer. He was the first scientist to make a refracting telescope. Galileo's telescope used to lenses to concentrate the light from celestial objects. Later on, he used his newly invented telescope to discover four of the moons circling Jupiter. He provided a number of scientific insights that laid of a foundation for future scientists and astronomers. -
Giovanni Cassini
1625-1712. Giovanni Cassini was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, and engineer. He is most known for discovering four satellites of the planet Saturn and noted the division of the rings of Saturn. The Cassini division was named after him. -
Sir Isaac Newton
1643-1724. Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and theologian. He discovered the calculus led the way to more powerful methods of solving mathematical problems. But is best known for his 3 laws of motion. -
William Herschel
1738-1822. William Herschel is a British-German astronomer. He is widely known credited as the founder of sidereal astronomy for observing the heavenly bodies. He discovered the planet Uranus and its two moons, and formulated a theory of stellar evolution. -
Percival Lowell
1855-1916. Percival Lowell was an American astronomer, author and mathematician. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona. He is best known for fueling speculation that there was life on Mars. Which was a vision that has had enormous impact on the development of Science Fiction. And discovered 793 Arizona which is a minor planet orbiting the Sun. -
Karl Jansky
1905-1950. Karl Jansky was an American physicist and radio engineer. Karl Jansky is best known for inventing the Radio Telescope. A radio telescope is an instrument used to detect radio emissions from the sky, whether from natural celestial objects or from artificial satellites. He also first discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. Karl Jansky is considered one of the founding figures of radio astronomy. -
Edwin Hubble
1889-1953. Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer. He is best known for his sequence called the Hubble Sequence. The Hubble Sequence is a morphological classification scheme for galaxies, it is often known colloquially as the Hubble tuning fork diagram because of the shape in which it is traditionally represented. -
Albert Einstein
1879-1955. Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics. He's best known for his influence on the philosophy of science. -
Sputnik
- Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957, orbiting for three weeks before its batteries died, then silently for two more months before falling back into the atmosphere
-
Ejnar Hertzsprung
Ejnar Hertzsprung was a Danish chemist and astronomer. He's best known for his diagram called, The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. Which is a scatter plot of stars showing the relationship between the stars' absolute magnitudes or luminosities versus their stellar classifications or effective temperatures. -
Yuri Gagarin
1934-1968. Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He became the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed one orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. -
The Apollo Program
1963-1972. The Apollo Program was the third United States human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which succeeded in landing the first humans on the Moon. The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. -
Mars Pathfinder Expedition
The Mars Pathfinder Expedition is an American robotic spacecraft that landed a base station with a roving probe on Mars in 1997. This mission was the first of a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, and was the first successful lander since the two Vikings landed on the red planet in 1976. -
Cassini Orbiter
The Cassini Orbiter was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. -
Neil Armstrong
1930-2012. Neil Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer. He is best known for being the first person to walk on the Moon. -
John Glenn
1921-2016. 1John Glenn was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962. Following his retirement from NASA, he served from 1974 to 1999 as a Democratic United States Senator from Ohio. -
Difference Between a Refracting & Reflecting Telescope
A reflecting telescope uses two mirrors instead of two lenses. Isaac Newton developed this telescope to combat chromatic aberration. Light from an object enters the telescope tube and is reflected off a curved mirror at the end of the tube. A refracting telescope's job of the objective lens, opposite the eyepiece end, is to gather the light coming from a distant object, such as a star, and bend it into a single point of focus. -
Hubble Telescope Discovers "Living Fossil" Galaxy in the Milky Way
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a dwarf galaxy in our own cosmic backyard, a mere 30 million light-years from the Milky Way. (That may sound like a far piece, but remember: the observable universe is a whopping 93 billion light-years across.)
