fundamentals: classical astronomy
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The Universe: A Timeline of Discovery
Aaaaand she’s back! Sorry for the delay — school had me burnt out! Consider this: humanity has existed for just a few thousand years, and for most of that time, our existence has been constrained to one little blue mote…
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Galileo and the Telescope
When you hear the name “Galileo Galilei,” what immediately comes to mind? If you thought, “inventor of the telescope,” you’re not alone. I also wouldn’t be surprised if you thought “condemned by the Inquisition for believing the Earth orbited the…
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Johannes Kepler and Planetary Motion
Thales and Pythagoras suggested that the natural world could be understood. Aristotle dared to imagine what was beyond the Earth. Plato encouraged thought about the universe, even if he did take astronomy one step forward and two steps backward. Copernicus…
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Tycho Brahe, the Observer
It is surprisingly difficult to find a flattering image of Tycho Brahe. Honestly. Do me a favor and do a Google image search for the guy. It’ll come up with all sorts of disfigured images, mostly because his nose got…
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The Copernican Revolution
Nicolaus Copernicus lived from 1473-1543, a time when rebellion against the Church was at its height. And unfortunately for the astronomy of the time, it had gotten inextricably tied up with Christian teachings. In that time, heaven and hell weren’t…
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The Ptolemaic Universe
Claudius Ptolemy lived about five centuries after the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s time. Aristotle’s model for the universe — the first geocentric model, with Earth at the center — was still widely accepted, and Ptolemy sought to improve it. Ptolemy was one…
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Aristotle’s Universe
You might have heard of Aristotle. He’s the guy who said that we are what we repeatedly do. His words are often interpreted to mean that, for instance, a person who farms is therefore a farmer — or a person…
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From Classical Beginnings
The universe as we know it was born out of chaos. We have a pretty good idea of the scale of our universe and how it began — as an infinitely dense point of matter that blew apart in what…
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Archaeoastronomy
Imagine that you’re living sometime around 2000 BCE, give or take a thousand years or so. That’s about 4000 years before our time. You look up at the sky at night, and see it filled with numerous points of light.…
