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384 BCE
Aristotle
He is a philosopher that proved that the earth is spherical. Also he believed that earth was the center of the universe. According to him the sun, other moons, stars, and all planets travel in all separate spheres. -
190 BCE
Hipparchus
He is known as the founder of trigonometry and discovered the procession of equinox and solstices. Hipparchus also calculated the length of the year in 6 ½ minutes. He was the one to find the distance from the earth and moon. Hipparchus made the first ever catalog of stars. -
100
Ptolemy
Ptolemy believed that Earth was the center of the universe called geocentric/Ptolemaic which means everything revolves around you. He also wrote a book called “Almagest”, a treatise in 13 books where earth is the center of our universe. -
1473
Copernicus
Copernicus is mostly known for the theory that the Sun is at rest near the center of the Universe, and that the Earth, spinning on its axis once daily, revolves annually around the Sun. This is mostly called the heliocentric or Sun-centered system. -
1546
Tycho Brahe
Tycho is a Danish astronomer whose work in developing astronomical instruments and in measuring and fixing the positions of stars. -
1564
Galileo
Galileo was the one who discovered four of Jupiter's moons almost four hundred years ago. Galileo was an Italian physicist and astronomer. Later that same year, he became the first person to look at the Moon through a telescope and make his first astronomy discovery. The four moons from Jupiter are Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. He also discovered sunspots. -
1570
Hans Lippershey
Lippershey was a German-Dutch spectacle-maker. He is commonly associated with the invention of the telescope. -
1571
Johannes Kepler
German astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion, conventionally designated as follows. The planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus. The time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”). -
Refracting Telescope
A refracting telescope is a type of optical telescope that uses a lens as its objective to form an image. The refracting telescope design was originally used in spy glasses and astronomical telescopes but is also used for long focus camera lenses. -
Giovanni Cassini
A French astronomer who, among others, discovered the Cassini Division, the dark gap between the rings A and B of Saturn; he also discovered four of Saturn's moons. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Newton is known for his work on gravity, but he worked on and discovered many other scientific wonders during his lifetime. He also invented the reflecting telescope. -
Reflecting Telescope
A reflecting telescope is a telescope that uses a single or combination of curved mirrors that reflect light and form an image. -
William Herschel
He found the planet Uranus and its two moons, and formulated a theory of stellar evolution. -
Percival Lowell
Lowell was an astronomer who predicted the existence of a planet beyond the orbit of Neptune and initiated the search that ended in the discovery of Pluto. -
Ejnar Hertzsprung
A Danish astronomer who classified types of stars by relating their color to their absolute brightness—an accomplishment of fundamental importance to modern astronomy. -
Albert Einstein
Einstein is most famous for his theory of Relativity. Find out about gravity, relativity and Einstein's quantum description of light. -
Edwin Hubble
He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology and is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time. His theory is that the universe is continuity expanding. -
Karl Jansky
Jansky was an American physicist and radio engineer who in August 1931 first discovered radio waves emanating from the Milky Way. -
John Glenn
In 1962, he became the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times. -
Neil Armstrong
Neil was the first person to walk on the Moon. He was also an aerospace engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. -
Yuri Gagarin
He was the first human to journey into outer space when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. -
Sputnik
The Soviet Union inaugurates the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for "satellite," . -
Apollo Missions
The apollo was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Six of the missions (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) achieved this goal. Apollos 7 and 9 were Earth orbiting missions to test the Command and Lunar Modules, and did not return lunar data. -
First Space Shuttle Flight
Space Shuttle Columbia (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-102) was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. It launched for the first time on mission STS-1 on April 12, 1981, the first flight of the Space Shuttle program. -
Mars Pathfinder Expedition
This was the first of a series of missions to Mars that included rovers, and was the first successful lander since the two Vikings landed on the red planet in 1976. -
Cassini Orbiter
The Cassini–Huygens mission, commonly called Cassini, was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. -
SpaceX Falcon Heavy
Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as a central core with two additional first stages as strap-on boosters.
