History of Astronomy Timeline
Category: Other
Updated: 4 Dec 2021
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Created byAndie Doscher
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Events
Apollo 11:
This was the space mission that had the first
people walk on the moon.Declassification of Pluto:
The International Astronomical Union made the
definition of a planet more specific and Pluto
did not make the cut.Columbia Disaster:
The space shuttle Columbia was returning after
a 16-day mission. When they were returning,
the shuttle broke apart and the whole crew was
killed.Gan De:
He was one of the first Chinese astronomers.
He recorded his observations using
coordinated and dates. This shows that there
are different stars visible at different times of
the year.Ptolemy:
He was able to predict prescribed pathways
and changing velocities. This allowed
astronomers to be able to make accurate
predictions of where planets would be.Eratosthenes:
He made the first measurement of Earth's size.
He did this by using the two points of the
relative position of the sun. This also proved
that the earth is round because the shadows
were at different angles at different latitudes.Aristarchus:
He was the first to say that the Earth rotates on
an axis and revolves around the sun. It is
evidence for the hellenistic model.Hipparchus:
He discovered the precession of the equinoxes.
This is documented by Pliny the Elder.
Hipparchus discovered this by observing the
alterations in the measured positions of the
stars proving from a moving earth.Nicolaus Copernicus:
Earth revolves around the sun, rotates on its
axis, and wobbles on its axis. These movements
explain irregular movements of celestial objects
in the sky.Galileo Galilei:
He discovered that Venus went through phases.
This confirmed Galileo's doubts about the
geocentric model. This gave more evidence to
the heliocentric model.Isaac Newton:
He discovered that gravity is a force that is
affected by the size and distance of two
bodies. Gravity depends on the amount of
matter in the attracted objects and the distance
between them.Johannes Kepler:
Kepler had three laws about the fundamental
laws of planetary motion. The first is that all
planets orbit the sun in an elliptical path. The
second is that planets are faster when they are
closer to the sun. The third is that the distance
from the sun effects the length of a planet's
orbital period. He fixed Copernicus's model by
having the planets orbit the sun elliptically.Christiaan Huygens:
He thought that light is made up of a series of
waves. This competed with Newton's
proposition that light was made of particles.
Today, scientists believe that light behaves as a
particle and a wave.Edwin Hubble:
He was studying the Andromeda Nebula and
noticed that it had stars that looks like stars
from the Milky Way but much fainter. He
came to the conclusion that the stars in the
Andromeda Nebula were much farther from
Earth. This gave evidence that the Andromeda
Nebula was a different galaxy and that not all
celestial objects were in the Milky Way.William Herschel:
He discovered the planet Uranus. Herschel was
using a telescope he built himself to study
stars. He noticed that one of them was unlike
the rest and discovered that is was orbiting the
sun.Carl Sagan:
He is thought to be one of the first astronomers
to suggest that there may exist on other
planets. This influenced NASA to search the
solar system for signs of life.Jocelyn Bell Burnell:
She is the first person who detected a pulsar, a
rapidly spinning neutron star. This discovery
influenced many new thoughts and ideas to
explain the origin of stars and how they formed
and developed.Georges Lemaître:
He drew out an early version of the big bang
theory. He proposed that the origin of the
universe started from a primeval atom. Since
everything in the universe is separating, there
must have been a time where everything was
compacted together.
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