1. The Origin of Modern Astronomy

2. Warm Up 8/29 (Pre-test)
T/F Historical records show that it was Aristotle who first proposed that all planets revolve around the sun.
T/F A Circle has an eccentricity of zero
T/F You throw a baseball to someone. Before the ball is caught, it is temporarily in orbit around Earth’s center
T/F Galileo's observations of the sky were made with the naked eye.
T/F Stonehenge was used as a calendar by ancient people

3. Astronomy
The definition of astronomy is the branch of science that deals with celestial objects, space, and the physical universe as a whole.

4. Law vs Theory A law is an unchangeable fact that we can observe
A theory is a collection of data that supports an idea, but that idea is not necessarily true.

5. The Roots of Astronomy
Already in the stone and bronze ages, human cultures realized the cyclic nature of motions in the sky.
Monuments dating back to ~ 3000 B.C. show alignments with astronomical significance.
Those monuments were probably used as calendars or even to predict eclipses.

6. Stonehenge
Constructed: 3000 – 1800 B.C.
Summer solstice
Heelstone
Alignments with locations of sunset, sunrise, moonset and moonrise at summer and winter solstices
Probably used as calendar.

7. Other Examples All Over the World
Big Horn Medicine Wheel (Wyoming)

8. Other Examples All Over the World (2)
Caracol (Maya culture, approx. A.D. 1000)

9. Warm-Up 8/30 What is the difference between Astronomy and Astrology?
What is the difference between a law and a theory?

10. Ancient Greek Astronomers (1)
Unfortunately, there are no written documents about the significance of stone and bronze age monuments.
First preserved written documents about ancient astronomy are from ancient Greek philosophy.
Greeks tried to understand the motions of the sky and describe them in terms of mathematical (not physical!) models.
Called the planets “planetes”, which means wanderer.

11. Ancient Greek Astronomers (2)
Models were generally wrong because they were based on wrong “first principles”, believed to be “obvious” and not questioned:
Geocentric Universe: Earth at the Center of the Universe.
“Perfect Heavens”: Motions of all celestial bodies described by motions involving objects of “perfect” shape, i.e., spheres or circles.

12. Ancient Greek Astronomers (3)
Eudoxus (409 – 356 B.C.): Model of 27 nested spheres
Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.), major authority of philosophy until the late middle ages: Universe can be divided in 2 parts:
1. Imperfect, changeable Earth,
2. Perfect Heavens (described by spheres)
He expanded Eudoxus’ Model to use 55 spheres.

13. Eratosthenes (~ 200 B.C.): Calculation of the Earth’s radius
Angular distance between Syene and Alexandria: ~ 70
Linear distance between Syene and Alexandria: ~ 5,000 stadia
Earth Radius ~ 40,000 stadia (probably ~ 14 % too large) – better than any previous radius estimate.
Used Trigonometry to figure out Earths Size

14. Eratosthenes’s Experiment
(SLIDESHOW MODE ONLY)

15. Later refinements (2nd century B.C.)
Hipparchus: Placing the Earth away from the centers of the “perfect spheres”
Ptolemy: Further refinements, including epicycles

16. Geocentric Earth Model
The Earth is the center
Worked well except the planets seemed to suddenly switch directions in orbit, called Retrograde Motion.
Ptolemy used the idea of Epicycles to explain this sudden change in direction, which are basically orbits in an orbit.
Deferents are the orbit of a body around the earth

17. Introduced to explain retrograde (westward) motion of planets
Epicycles
Introduced to explain retrograde (westward) motion of planets
The Ptolemaic system was considered the “standard model” of the Universe until the Copernican Revolution.

18. Epicycles
(SLIDESHOW MODE ONLY)

19. Warm-Up 8/31
What is the differences between an deferent and a epicycle?
Draw it out

20. The Copernican Revolution
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543):
Heliocentric Universe (Sun in the Center)

21. Copernicus’ new (and correct) explanation for retrograde motion of the planets
Retrograde (westward) motion of a planet occurs when the Earth passes the planet.
This made Ptolemy’s epicycles unnecessary.

22. Galileo Galilei (1594 – 1642)
Invented the modern view of science: Transition from a faith-based “science” to an observation-based science.
Greatly improved on the newly invented telescope technology. (But Galileo did NOT invent the telescope!)
Was the first to meticulously report telescope observations of the sky to support the Copernican Model of the Universe.

23. Major Discoveries of Galileo
Moons of Jupiter
(4 Galilean moons)
(What he really saw)
Rings of Saturn
(What he really saw)

24. Major Discoveries of Galileo (2)
Surface structures on the moon; first estimates of the height of mountains on the moon

25. Major Discoveries of Galileo (3)
Sun spots (proving that the sun is not perfect!)

26. Major Discoveries of Galileo (4)
Phases of Venus (including “full Venus”), proving that Venus orbits the sun, not the Earth!

27. Galileo’s Politics Was imprisoned for his ideas, unlike Copernicus.
Church stuck with the idea of a geocentric universe, and called Galileo a heretic
Spent the Last 10 years of his life under house arrest, and was blind

28. Warm-Up 9/1
What are three of Galileo’s important discoveries?

29. Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) Circular motion and Uniform motion.
Used the precise observational tables of Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) to study planetary motion mathematically.
Found a consistent description by abandoning both
Circular motion and
Uniform motion.
Planets move around the sun on elliptical paths, with non-uniform velocities.

30. Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion
The orbits of the planets are ellipses with the sun at one focus. c
Eccentricity e = c/a

31. The idea of Eccentricity
Eccentricity tells us how far away a circle is from being “normal”
Circles with higher eccentricity are more oval then circles with lower eccentricity.
An ellipse has an eccentricity greater than 0 but less than 1
Planetary orbits are ellipses

32. Eccentricities of Ellipses1) 2) 3)
e = 0.02
e = 0.1
e = 0.2 5) 4)
e = 0.4
e = 0.6

33. Eccentricities of Planetary Orbits
Orbits of planets are virtually indistinguishable from circles:
Most extreme example:
Pluto: e = 0.248
Earth: e =

34. Planetary Orbits (2)
A line from a planet to the sun sweeps over equal areas in equal intervals of time.
A planet’s orbital period (P) squared is proportional to its average distance from the sun (a) cubed:
(Py = period in years; aAU = distance in AU)
Py2 = aAU3

35. Historical Overview

36. Warm-up 9/2
Draw 2 circles, one with an eccentricity of 0 and the other with an eccentricity close to 1.

37. Isaac Newton
Used Kepler’s ideas of planetary motion to explain phenomenon on the earth.
Said that the planets are governed by the same laws of gravity as everything on the earth.
A lot of his laws still apply today

38. Gravity
There is a gravitational force between all objects in the universe.
The force of gravity is based on distance and mass of objects

39. Albert Einstein
Extended Newton’s laws to very large speeds, close to the speeds of light
Came up with the theory of relativity

40. Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996)
narrated and co-wrote the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

41. Neil deGrasse Tyson he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science"

42. Panspermia
the theory that life on the earth originated from microorganisms or chemical precursors of life present in outer space and able to initiate life on reaching a suitable environment.
Tardigrades can survive in space for 10 days