Ancient Greek Astronomy

Galileo was responsible for the creation of modern science becoming a discipline and its concepts and method a whole philosophical system. Galileo’s contributions involved using a telescope to examine space, inventing the microscope, disproving Aristotles laws, inventing the law of the pendulum, advocating the relativity of motion, and creating a mathematical physics. However one of his most important contributions was the fact that he conducted experiments, thus making him the first experimental scientist. Testing ideas with experiments was not a conventional approach in Galileo’s years therefore he revolutionized the way which science was conducted. Some of Galileo’s most important contributions to science include building a telescope of his own from scratch without ever seeing one in 1609. The observations that Galileo made through his telescope gave evidence that Earth is not the center of all things and that the planets orbited the Sun. Among his findings were the moons of Jupiter, the fact that the Moon’s surface was rough and covered in mountains and craters, the complete cycle of phases of Venus, and sunspots. Galileo observed the changing appearance of sunspots and concluded that the Sun rotates once per month around an axis that is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. These observations supported the Copernican model but rejected the philosophy of Aristotle.

Copernicus was a student of astronomy and astrology. He invented astronomy, as we now know it. Moreover, he was greatly shunned for his theory that the earth moves around the sun. This idea was called hello centric. The common theory was geocentric this was the idea that the earth is the center of the universe and everything moved around it. This idea was widely accepted. It was even taught by the church. However, when the church needed a better calendar they turned to a highly famous astrologer named, Copernicus.

Among these people were Copernicus who believed the sun was at the center of the world and the earth, stars and planets revolved around it. Danish astronomer Brahe helped contribute to this idea by contributing a large mass of data about the universe that he was able to discover. His student Kepler kept his ideas going, as he formulated many laws of planetary motion. He said the orbits around the sun were elliptical, planets don’t move in a uniform speed and the time a planet completes its orbit is related to its distance from the sun. Meanwhile, Florentine Galileo decided to use experiments to find out what happened and not what should happen, and discovered that a uniform force makes a uniform acceleration as well as inertia laws, that an object will be in motion forever unless stopped by another force.

the heliocentric solar system. Johannes Kepler further modified the heliocentric system, by mathematically showing that the planets’ orbits are elliptical. With his invention of the telescope, Galileo made new observations about the solar system and found mathematical laws that described the movement of the planets. Later, Isaac Newton established a universal law of gravity. With the new scientific discoveries, the gap between religion and science increased. Science revolutionized the human though and its understanding of the universe.

Copernicus began to question Ptolemy at a very young age. Copernicus didn’t believe Ptolemy’s view of the universe and that it was geocentric. Copernicus found mathematical errors to help him prove that Earth was not the center of the universe. After some research Copernicus realized that the universe was

While Copernicus was in college he started to question what he was taught. He theorized that the Sun stays in the same place, illuminating all of the planets, while the planets revolve around it in an elliptical motion. The stars also stay in the same place, but they look like they move because the Earth rotates on its axis as it revolves around the Sun. According to “Inventors and Scientists: Nicolaus Copernicus,” he made a tool that looked like multiple yardsticks combined with a tube he used to look through, almost like a telescope. He used this to measure the location of stars and planets.

Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who arose the Heliocentric Theory which caused the scientific revolution. Copernicus discoveries were very important, and impacted science to this day. Copernicus constructed his data from his astronomical observations of sun-centered cosmology. The Heliocentric theory is the belief that the sun is in the center of the universe and all the planets revolve around it. The Heliocentric Theory contradicts The Geocentric. “Copernicus's heliocentric solar system named the sun, rather than the earth, as the center of the solar system”. (http://www.biography.com/).

The geocentric model created by Ptolemy, and the heliocentric model created by Copernicus, had greatly differed in which force of being (the sun or the earth,) was the center of the universe. Ptolemy’s Geocentric

Even though is model wasn't completely correct, his discovery was greatly helpful for future discoveries from other scientists. When Copernicus was alive, everyone thought that planet Earth was the center of the universe. One problem he had regarding his model was the movement of the planets. When looking at them closely, he noticed that they would travel backwards after several nights of observation. Others called this retrograde motion.

Many ancient civilizations had their own beliefs about the stars and the universe. Some examples of these intelligent civilizations were the Ancient Babylonians, Middle Eastern civilizations, Central American civilizations, Ancient Chinese, and the Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Babylonians studied patterns on Venus which were later continued by Galileo and Copernicus. People from the Middle East, Central America, and China watched the skies and made many observations and predictions of movement in the heavens. There were many famous Philosophers and Astronomers from the Ancient Greek civilizations who studied the sky. They searched for patterns and numbers to find something fundamental. Thinkers attempted to come up with combinations of uniform circular motions that would prove their already observed irregular motions. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who thought that the moon, sun, and other planets rotated around the stationary Earth. But, as we know today, his theory was incorrect. Some other Greek philosophers attempted to measure the distance to the moon and even tried to find the size of the universe! They found the universe to be finite. On the other and, Claudius Ptolemy believed that the heavens (skies) were not made of rocks, metal, or other Earthy materials, but that they were made of

In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish Canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs”. The popular view is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves

He published his first astronomical work about it entitled Mysterium Cosmographicum (The Cosmographic Mystery). His work defended the Copernican system but never actually proved that it was correct.

After a thorough study he prepared a revolutionary theory that stated that the planets move in a circle formation rather than moving in an elliptical form. The system given by Galileo known as Ptolemaic system in which each planet has a system of two spheres one is called as a deferent and the other is termed as its epicycle. In this system it was argued that the Earth was in the center position of the universe while half the stars were above the horizon and other half of that stars were below the horizon. There was also an assumption that the stars are at a modest distance from the center of the universe. If somehow there is a displacement of Earth from its position, which is the center position, then this division will be into visible and invisible stars will not be equal. The Copernicus remains speculative in spite of the influence of the Maraghaschool as there was no documentary evidence to prove his system. There were many articles that argue that there is a biblical perspective which appear in some newsletters that indicates the apparent movement of the Sun and the Moon around the Earth rather than showing that the rotation of the Earth about its own

2. Eratosthenes, a Greek scholar, wrote a book with a title meaning "Earth description", which is similar to our modern definition of geography. Although no copies of his book survived, we know from other authors that Eratosthenes supported the idea of a round earth. Eratosthenes also drew intricate maps of the known world and determined the circumference of the earth with surprising accuracy. Hipparchus, another Greek scholar, was the first to draw an imaginary grid over the Earth's surface to divide it and simplify finding specific locations. The Roman Empire contributed to ancient knowledge of geography as well; a collection of geographic study expansions by Romans was recorded by Ptolemy, who was yet another Greek scholar.

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer and mathematician who lived between 1671-1630. Kepler was a Copernican and initially believed that planets should follow perfectly circular orbits (“Johan Kepler” 1). During this time period, Ptolemy’s geocentric theory of the solar system was accepted. Ptolemy’s theory stated that Earth is at the center of the universe and stationary; closest to Earth is the Moon, and beyond it, expanding towards the outside, are Mercury, Venus, and the Sun in a straight line, followed by Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the “fixed stars”. The Ptolemaic system explained the numerous observed motions of the planets as having small spherical orbits called epicycles (“Astronomy” 2). Kepler is best known for introducing three