Renaissance Astronomers

The Scientific Revolution brought a new way of thinking about the universe, and brought an end to Europe’s medieval past. Many scientists have devoted their lives to creating new ideas about the physical universe. These scientists created the assumption that the universe and nature are governed by mathematical laws. Each of the three scientists, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton contributed to the breakdown of the medieval world view. Nicolaus Copernicus thought past the idea of a geocentric universe, and established the idea of a heliocentric theory, or a sun-centered universe. Johannes Kepler presented the idea of an ellipse, otherwise known as the planets following an oval shaped orbit, and not a perfect circle. Finally,

Ancient Greek astronomers made some amazing mathematical and philosophical discovers about our universe. From the Hellenistic Greek observations in approximately 300 B.C.E., to the invention of the first telescope in the seventeenth century, to the launching of today’s space probes, one thing is evident: astrological observations are imperative to creating a calendar.

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.

Astronomy was a highly debated topic between scientists and the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and there was a place for all of the gods/zodiacs in it. An astronomer from the Middle Ages, Ptolemy, created the drawing of the universe which depicted the Earth in the very center of the universe, or geocentric. The geocentric universe, also contained an outer name in latin translating directly to “The Empire of Heaven and the Home of God and the Elect( document C )”. Contrary to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church another astronomer from The Renaissance created a sun centered universe or heliocentric. This astronomers name was Copernicus, he created his universe based on observation of the movement of the planets and mathematics. During the Middle Ages it was strongly believed that the universe was geocentric, but now astronomers like Copernicus have disproved these beliefs with concrete

Astronomy is the branch of science that deals with celestial objects, space, and the physical universe as a whole. During the Middle Ages, a Roman astronomer named Ptolemy came up with a theory that everything in the solar system revolved around the Earth (Document C). During the Renaissance, a Polish astronomer named Copernicus relied mostly on mathematics, he developed a very different understanding of the universe (Document C). He came up with a theory that everything in the universe revolves around the sun. The ideas of Copernicus were upsetting to the Catholic Church. They were upsetting because they thought the Earth was the biggest planet and that everything should revolve around it. You can see that man's view was changing through astronomy because the way that people saw the universe was

In “Towards a New Heaven: Revolution in Astronomy,” some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were dominated by medicine, mechanics, and astronomers. Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton were some of the brilliant individuals that magnified the revolutionary astronomy. These astronomers challenged the conception and beliefs through the nature of the external world.

When Tycho went to Germany he met some amateur astronomers who were very rich. They studied together for a long time. Their problem was they didn't have a very accurate way to observe the sky. This led them to make a large quadrant of a circle with a 19 foot radius! It took them over 20 men to build it! The quadrant was set so they could make observations through an open window. They also had several clocks all being used one after another to make the observations as precise as they possibly could. Then in 1570, after spending years in Germany with fellow astronomers, he returned home to

Astronomers throughout history have contributed to and influenced the advancements made in the study of the stars, moons, and planets. One man who played a vital role in these advancements was born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, but known as Tycho Brahe. His precise examination of the solar system solidified more accurate findings about the galaxy, including that of the nova, longitude coordinates, and the planetary coordinates.

Galileo was born into a continent wracked by cultural ferment and religious divisions. In the late of 1500s, he saw the last years of the Italian Renaissance, which is a revival of arts and letters that sought the recovery and reworking of classical art and philosophy from ancient Greece and Rome. And on the 15th and 16th centuries, the Renaissance Italy was a center of artistic and intellectual ferment, a home for the great geniuses of the revived humanistic spirit Machiavelli, Da Vinci, Petrarch, Michelangelo, and many more. But the popes also enjoying the peak of their influence, not just the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church during these years, the popes do served as secular leaders as well, and controlling much of central Italy around

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.

In the mid 1500’s, the Scientific Revolution altered the way the opinions of the masses. This change paved a new way of thinking for Europeans. More than 1,000 years ago, individuals concluded that the Earth was the center of the universe. Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer was interested in studying science eclipses; in Germany he studied mathematics and astronomy. In 1571 when he was 25 years old, the King of England granted him the island of Denmark and extra money to build his own observatory.

The Scientific Revolution is the qualitative jump in sciences in the 17th century. New discoveries in natural science, engineering, geography rejected many traditional ideas and a common picture of the world. Aristotle, Claudius Ptolemy, and Christian Theology represented the universe as geocentric conception where the earth was motionless and in the center of concentric spheres. (479) Such representation was supported till Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) argued Ptolemy's conception and suggested heliocentric understanding. His conception opened the Earth as a planet where the moon took place as Earth's satellite and the sun was the center of planets. Also as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler disagreed with Ptolemy's geocentric system. Based on the Brahe's work, Kepler came to conclusions that each planet moves in an ellipse and were able to calculate relations between planets' size and

Many individuals find astronomy interesting, making it easy to get swept away in its wonders. There is much more to astronomy than counting stars, as one can see as they admire the beauty of the pictures in a textbook or looking up at the night sky. By reading this literature,

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

Throughout human history, civilization was built and developed upon a sense of mystery. In the ancient time, people believed the existence of eternal God, who lived beyond people’s vision in the vastness of dark sky, and developed their own routine upon that. Observed this mysterious sky for centuries, Greek astronomer Ptolemy finally developed a geocentric model in the Second Century A.D in his book Almagest. In his work, Ptolemy made all of his assumptions were purely based on observations. In 1543, a Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus polished a heliocentric model, which again was derived on visual evidences. These revolutionary discoveries took years to complete. As a comparison, modern astronomical science, which explains the origin of the universe and life cycle of stars, was established and rapidly developed in merely four hundred years: people now understood so much about the universe. These astonishing developments were the result of observational technology advancement: everything people know about this universe is from observation. From simple optical telescopes to radio telescopes and high-energy telescopes, people constantly improve observational technologies to make more discoveries. This scientific development reached its climax as people launched a revolutionary telescope above the atmosphere for a better quality of image. These revolutionary changes in observational technology help this universe be more comprehensive to human.