The Development Of Telescope

The article ‘On the Recentness of What We Know,’ written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, is a pleasant read about the author’s fondness of astronomy and his insight regarding the science of it and knowledge gleaned from it. Klinkenborg recounts a few of his star-gazing memories and then proceeds to analyze the effects cosmological discoveries have on him personally and humanity in general. The author shares bits of theoretical history of the universe and information on the early astronomers whose hypotheses have developed that history. He goes on to reference various well known discoveries throughout the years and marvels at how drastically information in recent years has changed the stories of our universe.

Over the course of the years, society has been reformed by new ideas of science. We learn more and more about global warming, outer space, and technology. However, this pattern of gaining knowledge did not pick up significantly until the Scientific Revolution. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Scientific Revolution started, which concerned the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and medicine. These new scientists used math and observations strongly contradicting religious thought at the time, which was dependent on the Aristotelian-Ptolemy theory. However, astronomers like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton accepted the heliocentric theory. Astronomical findings of the Scientific Revolution disproved the fact that humans were

These ideas not only, obviously, created a new conception of the forming of the universe, but also of humanities place within it. The Copernican hypothesis had enormous religious implications as it destroyed the idea that the earth was different from where God was. This eliminated the realm of perfection. Therefore humanity’s place within the Earth was lessening in importance. Also, 1572 a “new star,” which was really an exploding star, left a huge impression on many people. This is because it contradicted the idea that the heavenly spheres were unchanging, thus

“The lights that filled the universe could be channeled, dissected, magnified, and measured by human ingenuity” (enlight, 2). There was a significant breakthrough in regards to what could be done in continuing to explore new theories.

Copernicus discovery was a revelation and it undermined the system of hierarchy in the universe that gave order to the world, which was central to the Christian faith. (7) It was believed that God had created the universe for man, and that he had given the central position in his creation to man, giving people a profound sense of security however Copernicus theory took away man’s central position in the universe. (7) The new scientific discoveries were detrimental to authority as they fostered doubt uncertainty, anxiety and threated belief in the faith (*), however the full implications of these discoveries were not fully understood by people during the scientific revolution. The enlightenment further built on this decreasing belief in political and religious authority, and an increasing belief in the power through human reason (8). Critical reason was believed to be able to be used to combat both ignorance and tyranny. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) viewed the enlightenment as man emerging from a self-imposed state of immaturity. He believed that with critical reasoning man would be enlightened with the truth, further building on the discoveries of the scientific revolution, the enlightenment enabled was the start of people questioning, what they believed with critical reason. The so called age of reason’ targeted religion and the old way of Aristotelian logic.(8) The discoveries of the scientific

During the 1500s, thinkers applied the scientific method to the pursuit of knowledge, encouraging many others to uncover many unknown features. The heliocentric model of the world was just one important breakthrough that was introduced during

A Polish scientist brought a new idea that would make many people think. “Nicolaus Copernicus believed that the center of the Universe was the sun or the Heliocentric View” (Document D). This illustrates that many people discovered new aspects of science. As a result, more ideas will spark from others, coming off of Nicolaus’s new speculation. Next, the famous “Renaissance Man” studies this sophisticated topic.

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

Document C and Document D prove how science was evolved. “He developed a theory of the universe that was adopted by most scholars during the Middle Ages.” (Document C) Claudius Ptolemy was the Roman astronomer who thought of the Geocentric model of the universe. By definition, Geocentric means “having, or representing the Earth as the center.”

Chapter seven opens with the assumption of a cosmography concept of the universe from all history civilization. In particular, the perception of ANE society in terms of how they described the picture of the universe as a whole. Today, one can create a better map with the main features of the universe due to science and technology has evolved. At the same time, to have a better understanding of how the earth, the sun, and starts functioned within their area of operation.

In order to discover how the cosmos works, humanist believe that “observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against evidence has the best track record” (Fry, “That’s Humanism!”).

Humans have always wondered what the universe looks like. Creating theories and refuting against themselves, by the 16th century, the geocentric view of the universe was the most accepted assumption of what the universe looks like. Copernicus and Galileo were two who challenged the theory and convinced the world that the geocentric view is, in fact, wrong. In other words, they decided to fight against the societal oppression of a widely accepted concept to create a controversy that changed the way everyone looked at the universe. By this, that individuals change their minds when given logical reasoning and scientific evidence can be implied, although unhurriedly, regardless of how popular and supported the knowledge is.

Clearly the better and stronger our telescopes and other methods used to evaluate the sky will result in further discoveries. Not only do we have Earth bound telescopes; we have telescopes in the sky that can get even closer to other matter – whether that be planets, stars, comets, asteroids, etc. The textbook also notes radial velocity and how the gravitational pull of a planet results in the star wobbling. “If the wobble happens to occur along our line of sight to the star, then we see small fluctuations in the star’s radial velocity, which can be measured using the Doppler effect” (Chaisson & McMillan, 2014, p 371) allowing us to estimate the mass of the planet (Chaisson & McMillan, 2014, p 371). I found this website: http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/exoplanets/how-to-search-for-exoplanets.html that gives three ways. They are noted as radial velocity (already stated); transit photometry (having to do with the brightness – or lack thereof – of a star when another “planet passes between it and the Earth” (How to Search for Exoplanets)), and Microlensing (stated as the only real method that is capable of discovering other planets at huge distances from Earth (How to Search for Exoplanets)). It further notes that while radial velocity can identify them within 100 light years, transit photometry can identify them more than 100 light years (100’s in fact), and transit photometry can find those that are thousands of light years away. I need to understand

“The Hubble, has given us nothing less than an ontological awakening, a forceful reckoning with what is the telescope compels the mind to contemplate space and time on a scale just shy of the infinite.” implied Ross Anderson, an engineer. With this one telescope, created by a normal astronomer, scientists and astronomers are able to see space as never seen before. They are able to make mind boggling observations that contemplate space to an infinite scale. Thousands of discoveries about space have been observed through this lense and without the magnitude of high level instruments compiled into this large instrument most of these observations would never have been discovered. As proposed by Floyd E. Bloom a researcher, on izquotes.com, “As

Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, and astrological practices of pre-history: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not completely disentangled from it until a few centuries ago in the Western World . In some cultures astronomical data was used for astrological prognostication.