History of Astronomy

  • Cave Painting
    38,000 BCE

    Cave Painting

    Germany- Cave paintings that show constellations represented by animals
  • Period: 38,000 BCE to 1901 BCE

    Prehistoric Europe

  • Warren Field
    8000 BCE

    Warren Field

    Scotland- First known calendar “Warren Field”. It takes form as a monolith which helps track moon movements (12 months)
  • Goseck Circle
    5000 BCE

    Goseck Circle

    Germany- Goseck circle is a circular enclosure that serves as a way to map stars
  • Newgrange Passage Tomb
    3200 BCE

    Newgrange Passage Tomb

    Ireland- An entrance opens to a 62 feet long passageway leading to a central chamber 20 feet high. For about 2 weeks on either side of the winter solstice, light streams through a roof box located above the entrance passage. This allows light to shine through the length of the passageway, lighting up the entire central chamber, where people must've been buried.
  • Stonehenge
    3000 BCE

    Stonehenge

    England- Main stones of Stonehenge are placed.
  • Kokino Site
    1900 BCE

    Kokino Site

    North Macedonia- A Bronze Age astronomical observatory was constructed there around 1900 BC and continuously served the nearby community that lived there until about 700 BC.
  • Babylon Star Catalogues
    1200 BCE

    Babylon Star Catalogues

    Mesopotamia- Babylonian star catalogs with persistent names. The oldest catalog has accurate
  • Period: 1200 BCE to 323

    Ancient Astronomy

  • First Eclipse
    747 BCE

    First Eclipse

    Babylonia- First accurately calculated eclipses start to appear.
  • Plato
    450 BCE

    Plato

    Greece- Plato described the universe as a spherical body divided into circles carrying the planets and governed according to harmonic intervals by a world soul.
  • Aristotle
    450 BCE

    Aristotle

    Greece- Aristotle, drawing on the mathematical model of Eudoxus, proposed that the universe was made of a complex system of concentric spheres, whose circular motions combined to carry the planets around the earth.
  • Three-Dimensional Model
    400 BCE

    Three-Dimensional Model

    Greece- The first geometrical, three-dimensional models to explain the apparent motion of the planets were developed
  • Goal-Year Texts
    323 BCE

    Goal-Year Texts

    Babylonia- Astronomers began to use "goal-year texts" to predict the motions of the planets. These texts compiled records of past observations to find repeating occurrences of ominous phenomena for each planet.
  • Bede of Jarrow
    700

    Bede of Jarrow

    England- Bede of Jarrow published an influential text, On the Reckoning of Time, providing churchmen with the practical astronomical knowledge needed to compute the proper date of Easter using a procedure called the computus. This text remained an important element of the education of clergy from the 7th century until well after the rise of the Universities in the 12th century.
  • Period: 700 to 1400

    Medieval Europe

  • Zij al-Sindhind
    830

    Zij al-Sindhind

    Muslim world- The work contains tables for the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets known at the time. The work is significant as it introduced Ptolemaic concepts into Islamic sciences.
  • Kitab fi Jawami
    850

    Kitab fi Jawami

    The work contains tables for the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets known at the time. The work is significant as it introduced Ptolemaic concepts into Islamic sciences.
  • Observatories
    900

    Observatories

    Muslim areas- Rise of the first observatories which produced star catalogs
  • House of Wisdom
    900

    House of Wisdom

    Baghdad- House of wisdom was a building used for research that revolutionized the use of parameters, sources and calculation methods from different scientific traditions made the Ptolemaic tradition "receptive right from the beginning to the possibility of observational refinement and mathematical restructuring
  • Abd al-Rahman
    1000

    Abd al-Rahman

    Muslim world- Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Azophi) carried out observations on the stars and described their positions, magnitudes, brightness, and color and drawings for each constellation in his Book of Fixed Stars.
  • Trips to Spain
    1000

    Trips to Spain

    Europe- Scholars such as Gerbert of Aurillac began to travel to Spain and Sicily to seek out learning which they had heard existed in the Arabic-speaking world. There they first encountered various practical astronomical techniques concerning the calendar and timekeeping, most notably those dealing with the astrolabe. Soon scholars such as Hermann of Reichenau were writing texts in Latin on the uses and construction of the astrolabe.
  • Period: 1000 to 830

    Medieval Middle East

  • Optics
    1100

    Optics

    Spain- Translated ibn al-Haytham‘s great book, Optics, into Latin. Like Shen Gua in China, Roger Bacon, a Franciscan monk in England, read al-Haytham’s work in the 1200s AD. Bacon learned about glass lenses, refraction, and how light and eyes worked.
  • Camera Obscura
    1267

    Camera Obscura

    England- Roger Bacon built a camera obscura. He made curved glass magnifying lenses
  • Solar Clocks
    1400

    Solar Clocks

    Europe-popularization of solar clocks
  • Nicholas Copernicus
    1473

    Nicholas Copernicus

    Poland- Founder of modern astronomy, in addition to being a key piece in what was called the Scientific Revolution at the time of the Renaissance.
  • Period: 1473 to

    Copernican Revolution

  • Tycho Brahe
    1546

    Tycho Brahe

    Sweden- Primarily known for its laws on the movement of the planets in its orbit around the sun . He was a collaborator of Tycho Brahe , whom he replaced as imperial mathematician of Rodolfo II .
  • Galileo Gallei
    1554

    Galileo Gallei

    Italy- Improvements to the telescope,several astronomical discoveries and the first law of motion
  • Johannes Kepler
    1571

    Johannes Kepler

    Germany- Primarily known for its laws on the movement of the planets in its orbit around the sun . He was a collaborator of Tycho Brahe , whom he replaced as imperial mathematician of Rodolfo II .
  • Isaac Newton

    Isaac Newton

    England- He describes the law of universal gravitation and established the foundations of classical mechanics through the laws that bear his name. Among his other scientific discoveries are the works on the nature of light and optics (which are presented mainly in his work Opticks ), and in mathematics, the development of infinitesimal calculus .
  • Period: to

    Modern Astronomy

  • Observations with VLT

    Observations with VLT

    The observations made with the VLT have for the first time revealed the effects predicted by Einstein's general relativity on the motion of a star passing through the extreme gravitational field near the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way.
  • Planet outside of our Solar System

    Planet outside of our Solar System

    The VLT has obtained the first-ever image of a planet outside our Solar System. The 5-Jupiter-mass planet orbits a failed star — a brown dwarf — at a distance of 55 times the mean Earth-Sun distance.
  • Observations of Exploding Stars

    Observations of Exploding Stars

    Two independent research teams, based on observations of exploding stars, including those from ESO's telescopes at La Silla and Paranal, have shown that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for this result.
  • System of Seven Planets

    System of Seven Planets

    Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. Three of the planets lie in the habitable zone and could harbour oceans of water on their surfaces, increasing the possibility that the star system could play host to life. This system has both the largest number of Earth-sized planets yet found and the largest number of worlds that could support liquid water on their surfaces.
  • ESO's telescopes in Chile

    ESO's telescopes in Chile

    ESO’s fleet of telescopes in Chile have detected the first visible counterpart to a gravitational wave source. These historic observations suggest that this unique object is the result of the merger of two neutron stars. The cataclysmic aftermaths of this kind of merger — long-predicted events called kilonovae — disperse heavy elements such as gold and platinum throughout the Universe.