Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Motions of Satellites and Spacecraft
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Newton’s universal law of gravitation and Kepler’s laws describe the motions of Earth satellites and interplanetary spacecraft as well as the planets. Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, was launched by what was then called the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. Since…
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Orbits in the Solar System
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Recall that the path of an object under the influence of gravity through space is called its orbit, whether that object is a spacecraft, planet, star, or galaxy. An orbit, once determined, allows the future positions of the object to be calculated.…
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Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Newton’s laws of motion show that objects at rest will stay at rest and those in motion will continue moving uniformly in a straight line unless acted upon by a force. Thus, it is the straight line that defines the most natural state of…
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Newton’s Great Synthesis
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: It was the genius of Isaac Newton that found a conceptual framework that completely explained the observations and rules assembled by Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, and others. Newton was born in Lincolnshire, England, in the year after Galileo’s death (Figure 3.6). Against the advice of…
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The Laws of Planetary Motion
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: At about the time that Galileo was beginning his experiments with falling bodies, the efforts of two other scientists dramatically advanced our understanding of the motions of the planets. These two astronomers were the observer Tycho Brahe and the mathematician Johannes Kepler. Together, they…
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Thinking Ahead
How would you find a new planet at the outskirts of our solar system that is too dim to be seen with the unaided eye and is so far away that it moves very slowly among the stars? This was the problem confronting astronomers during the nineteenth century as they tried to pin down a…
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Collaborative Group Activities
Collaborative Group Activities
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For Further Exploration, Websites
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…
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The Birth of Modern Astronomy – Copernicus and 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.…
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Astrology and Astronomy
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…
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