Early Astronomers

By jessbrown
  • 1000 BCE

    The Babylonians

    The Babylonians
    For the Babylonians, astronomy started as a religion, not a science. They believed that the Universe was divided into six levels with three heavens, the highest being a “heaven of stars” which the gods used to communicate with them. Because the movements of the planets and stars were so important, Babylonians began to develop an exact science to analyze their positions.
  • 500 BCE

    Early Greek Astronomers

    Early Greek Astronomers
    They were famous for their schools of higher knowledge. . Heracleides of Pontus first proposed the concept that the Earth made a daily rotation, although he also believed that the Sun and the other planets orbited the Earth each day.
  • 322 BCE

    Aristotle

    Aristotle
    Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) is sometimes called the grandfather of science. He studied under the great philosopher Plato and later started his own school, the Lyceum, at Athens. He also believed in a geocentric Universe and that the planets and stars were perfect spheres, but the Earth wasn't. He was one of the first to study plants, animals, and people in a scientific way, and he believed in experimenting whenever possible and developed logical ways of thinking.
  • 150

    Ptolemy

    Ptolemy
    Ptolemy was an astronomer and mathematician who believed that the earth was the center of the universe. In Greek, the work for earth is ‘geo’ so this theory is called the geocentric theory. The geocentric theory was accepted for hundreds of years before proven wrong. However, even with this incorrect theory, he was able to track and predict the stars’ movements using mathematics.
  • 1500

    Copernicus

    Copernicus
    His heliocentric system put the Sun (helio) at the center of our system. He was not the first to have this theory. His ideas, including the revelation that the Earth rotates on an axis, were too different for most of the scholars of his time to accept. This became known as Copernicism.

  • Galileo

    Galileo
    Galileo was born in Italy nearly a century after Copernicus. He had his own ideas and theories, and he opposed most of Aristotle's teachings. One of his first major discoveries was the surface texture of the moon. With his telescope, he discovered craters and hills on the moon, which was contrary to the opinion that the moon was a "perfect heavenly object."