Astronomer Aristarchus Stellar Aberration

Ptolemy, a Roman astronomer came up with the theory that the universe revolved around Earth and all the creatures inhabiting it (Doc. C). This theory, The Geocentric Universe of Ptolemy, was adjusted by most of the people during The Middle Ages. However, much later on, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, disagreed with Ptolemy’s theory. With his use of math and reason, he came up with a new theory called The Heliocentric Universe of Copernicus (Doc. C). He said that the universe & Earth itself revolves around the sun. The Church denied this theory because they did not want to be proven wrong. If the Church was wrong about this part of the universe, this would then cause man to wonder what else they could be wrong about, or even lied to them about. This new theory taught men to think for themselves and not to rely on the Church for

While the Roman Catholic Church believed that the earth was the center of the universe, Nicolaus Copernicus’s discovered that the Earth actually was one of the planets hat revolved around the sun. “For, in the first place, they are so uncertain about the motion of the sun and moon that they cannot establish and observe a constant length even for the tropical year. (Document 1)” The church belief did not make sense because it was wrong. They were going off wrong information that they could not establish a constant year, which confuses people. Nicolaus said that the earth moved around the sun, which made more sense and

(between June 20th and June 22nd) the Greek Astronomer, Eratosthenes had heard of a famous well in a Egyptian City called Syene (now known as Aswan) located around the Nile River. He knew that every year on the solstice, there was no shadow on the bottom of well but instead the rays of sunlight reflected back, and not on the sides of the well as on other days. He came to a conclusion that the sun was directly overhead in Syene at noon every year. He knew that in his hometown Alexindra, the sun was never directly above him even on the solstice. He assembled a pole in Alexindra to study and calculate the shadows position eventually proving that no sun was directly above but faintly south. Knowing that the earth was curved and knowing the distance between the two cities, Syene and Alexandra he calculated the planets circumference by doing simple geometry. “Eratosthenes could measure the angle of the Sun’s rays off the vertical by dividing the length of the leg opposite the angle (the length of the shadow) by the leg adjacent to the angle (the height of the pole). This gave him an angle of 7.12 degrees. He knew that the circumference of Earth constituted a circle of 360 degrees, so 7.12 (or 7.2, to divide 360 evenly by 50) degrees would be about one-fiftieth of the circumference. He also knew the approximate distance between Alexandria and Syene, so he could set up this

During the 1500s, scientific ideas were primarily based on ancient and medieval ideas. Earlier ideas about the universe were based on Aristotle’s principles, which postulated that the earth was stationary and was at the center of the universe. Later Copernicus overturned the medieval idea of the universe by postulating that the earth revolved around the sun. Scholars like Brahe, Galileo refined the Copernicus model by experimenting and collecting evidence. Even though there were several fundamental breakthroughs by Galileo and other scientists, the new findings failed to explain the forces that controlled the movement of the planets and falling of objects on Earth, and Sir Isaac Newton challenged to solve this ambiguity.

Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer. He studied the movements of the planets but as he did what Ptolemy had stated made less and less sense to him. Ptolemy had written that the solar system was geocentric, or in other words that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and other planets orbited the earth. This theory was accepted for 1,400 years until around this time. Copernicus said that the solar system was heliocentric, and the sun was the center of the solar system.

Galileo devised his own telescope, in which he observed the moon and found Venus had phases like the moon, proving it rotated around the sun.

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

As time past, astronomers began to move away from the geocentric model and began to create a heliocentric model. This model stated that everything in the universe orbited the Sun, including the Earth. The planets had an elliptical orbit. Earth actually rotated on its axis once a day. The heliocentric model also explained the phases of Venus and why Jupiter's moons stayed with the planet.

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

Throughout the history of the world, there were many unsure views of how everything in the universe moved. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, developed a geocentric idea in the mid-300’s B.C. that stated everything in the universe orbited around Earth, and Earth was the center of the universe. This theory stuck around for almost a thousand years. In fact, it had stayed around for so long, that it became a part of Christian doctrine.

In the sixteenth century the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, an early supporter of the Copernican theory that Earth and other planets orbit the Sun (heliocentrism), put forward the view that the fixed stars are similar to the Sun and are likewise accompanied by planets.

Many Scientists knew the Earth was round centuries before humans took the journey into space. The Greek astronomer, Eratosthenes in 200 B.C was aware that at noon on the first day of summer, the sun in one city in Egypt passed directly overhead. However, on the same day in another city in Egypt, vertical objects cast a shadow of seven degrees. If the Earth were flat, this observation would’ve been hard to understand. But if the Earth were round, Eratosthenes reasoned, you could use this information to figure out the Earth’s circumference. [16] Another way in which science knows the Earth is flat was when Christopher Columbus sailed to North America in 1492. Columbus thought the Earth was round and gave proof that when

The First Law of Planetary Motion, which is The Law of Ellipses, states that The path of the planets around the sun is elliptical in shape, with the center of the sun being located at one focus. It took five years of measuring the motion of Mars across the sky for

Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, published a treatise, named On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, that countered Ptolemy’s theory. The Ptolemaic theory states that the a series of nine hollow and concentric perfect spheres revolved around a motionless earth in a perfectly circular path, with the first seven spheres having one of the heavenly bodies embedded in its shell, the eighth holding the stars and the ninth surrounding everything and providing cosmos’ spin that keeps everything moving. Beyond the spheres was heaven. On the other hand, Copernicus argued that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth, along with the other planets, revolved around it. His theory implied that the earth was just another planet

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