Category: 2. Observing Sky: The Birth of Astronomy

Collaborative Group Activities

For Further Exploration Articles Ancient Astronomy Gingerich, O. “From Aristarchus to Copernicus.” Sky & Telescope (November 1983): 410. Gingerich, O. “Islamic Astronomy.” Scientific American (April 1986): 74. Astronomy and Astrology Fraknoi, A. “Your Astrology Defense Kit.” Sky & Telescope (August 1989): 146. Copernicus and Galileo Gingerich, O. “Galileo and the Phases of Venus.” Sky & Telescope (December 1984): 520. Gingerich, O. “How Galileo…

Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Astronomy made no major advances in strife-torn medieval Europe. The birth and expansion of Islam after the seventh century led to a flowering of Arabic and Jewish cultures that preserved, translated, and added to many of the astronomical ideas of the Greeks.…

Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Many ancient cultures regarded the planets and stars as representatives or symbols of the gods or other supernatural forces that controlled their lives. For them, the study of the heavens was not an abstract subject; it was connected directly to the life-and-death…

Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Early Greek and Roman Cosmology Our concept of the cosmos—its basic structure and origin—is called cosmology, a word with Greek roots. Before the invention of telescopes, humans had to depend on the simple evidence of their senses for a picture of the…

Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Let us now look briefly back into history. Much of modern Western civilization is derived in one way or another from the ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans, who got most of their ideas from the ancient Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptians. …

Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Our senses suggest to us that Earth is the center of the universe—the hub around which the heavens turn. This geocentric (Earth-centered) view was what almost everyone believed until the European Renaissance. After all, it is simple, logical, and seemingly self-evident. Furthermore,…

Much to your surprise, a member of the Flat Earth Society moves in next door. He believes that Earth is flat and all the NASA images of a spherical Earth are either faked or simply show the round (but flat) disk of Earth from above. How could you prove to your new neighbor that Earth…