EARLY HISTORY (2700 B.C. – 1600 A.D.)
Early Astronomy: Predicting Eclipses, Determining Equinoxes and Solstices
2700 B.C. (Stonehenge, England) - stones marked solstices and equinoxes; Aubrey holes predicted eclipses
2000 B.C. [Sumerians] - earliest constellations (bull, lion, scorpion); base 60 system
2000 B.C. [Babylonians] - Pythagorean Theorem
1000 B.C. [Egyptians] - helical rising of Sirius; 12 month, 30 day calendar; sundial
1000 B.C. [Chinese] - counting boards
700 B.C. – 50 A.D. [Babylonians] - planetary positions and eclipses
600 B.C [Pre-Greek: Thales of Miletus] - solar eclipse prediction, Saros Cycle; constellations as known today
600 B.C. (Miletus, Greece) [Anaximander] - shadow from stick t calculate the length of the year; life originated in water, evolved from simpler forms
500 B.C [Pythagoras of Samos] - spherical moon, spherical-moving Earth
450 B.C [Empodocles] - water thief to argue that air must be so finely divided that it’s invisible
400 B.C. [Chinese] - sunspots
400 B.C. [Democritus] - atoms, large number of other worlds, Milky Way aggregates of light from other galaxies
4th Century B.C [Plato] - proposed Uniform Circular Motion of Planets; spherical Earth
350 B.C. (Athens, Greece) [Aristotle]- model of the solar system: spherical universe centered on solid spherical Earth (geocentric view); moon between Earth and Sun; all objects are from the four elements – earth, water, fire, and air; earth and heaven to be subject to two different sets of laws
300 B.C. (Alexandria) [Euclid] - most prominent mathematician; “Elements”: geometry; conic sections
310-250 B.C. [Aristarchus of Samos] - relative distances and sizes of the Moon and the Sun; Sun at the center of the solar system (heliocentric view); used Earth’s shadow to measure the size of the moon
200 B.C. (Alexandria) [Eratosthenes] - measured earth’s size using simple geometry and scientific process
130 B.C. [Hipparchus of Rhodes] - star maps; star catalog of 850 stars, precession; epicycles
150 A.D. [Ptolemy] - fixed Aristotle’s model with the epicycle theory: planets move in epicycles (small circular paths around which the planets move); the centers pf epicycles are along the deferent (big circle)
250 A.D. [Mayans] - “place-value” number system
500 A.D [Hyptia] - first known woman astronomer, librarian of Alexandria
500 A.D. [Chinese] - solar wind; comets: tail of comets always point away from the Sun
6th – 9th Century A.D. [Persian and Arabic Astronomy] - “Al-Sufi”: Book of Stars Showing Orion Nebula; “Al-Battani”: Non-circularity of Earth’s Orbit
10th Century A.D. [Mayans] - Dresden Codex, Venus tables, eclipse tables
10th Century A.D. [Chinese] - star map showing 26 sections
1054 A.D. [Chinese] - supernova: remnant traced to Crab Nebula
1100 A.D. [Pueblo Native Americans] - Sun Dagger
1270 A.D. [Samarkand] - star catalog
Mid-1400′s A.D. (Germany) [Regiomontanus] - “Ephemeris”; “The Nuremberg Chronicle” – planetary positions and comet charts
