Category Archives: Historical

Historical Astronomers in Context

Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who was born on February 19,1473 and died on May 24, 1543. Copernicus was important to astronomy because he formulated and popularized the idea that the Sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the “universe.” He also accurately described how Earth’s rotation was the cause of sunrise […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler: As a young apprentice of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler had years of naked-eye observations to make discoveries with. Between the discrepancies surrounding Tycho’s observations and the Copernican belief that planetary orbits are perfect circles, Kepler surmised that planetary orbits are ellipses. He took his discoveries and named three laws of planetary motion that […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler (Birth date – December 27th, 1571, Death date – November 15th, 1630) Kepler was important to astronomy because he rejected the tens of thousands year old belief that the Earth was the center of the universe and planets orbited in perfect circles. He instead created Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion, which suggest […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) Tycho Brahe was the best naked eye observer of all time. He lived before the invention of the telescope, and therefore had to rely on his vision for all of his observations. He presented a geo-heliocentric model of the solar system in which the sun and moon revolved around Earth but everything […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Of the given astronomers, I chose Tycho Brahe (December 14, 1546 – October 24, 1601): Tycho Brahe created precise instruments for observing and measuring the sky before the creation of the telescope. He kept a meticulous record of stars and planets- in particular Mars along with a new model of the solar system which would […] Continue reading

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler, who lived from 1571 to 1630, revealed three laws of planetary motion which explain the motion of the planets in the solar system. The first law concerning orbits states that all planets move around the Sun in an elliptic orbit. The second law, the “area law,” implies that a planets angular […] Continue reading

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historical astronomers in context

Johannes Kepler (born December 27, 1571– died November 15, 1630) contributed to the field of astronomy by the formulation of his 3 Laws of Planetary Motion, which were later derived and formalized by Isaac Newton. The laws are 1) that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun at one focal point, 2) that a […] Continue reading

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the cosmic calendar

The history of the universe is tough to wrap our heads around, much less to place in the context of our own lives! When studying astronomy, we are presented with so many large numbers — that the distance between earth and sun is 150,000,000 km, the universe is 14 billion years old, and the Milky […] Continue reading

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Crop Circles, Extraterrestial Communication, and a Response to the Arecibo message

In 2001, right near the world’s largest radio telescope in England, a strange phenomenon was observed. The crops near the telescope formed into an interesting formation: This formation from above convincingly resembled a face. Scientists were baffled, and what’s even more interesting is what came next. so in 1974, Carl Sagan sent out the Arecibo […] Continue reading

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Blog Post 6: What Sokka and King Tut have in common.

Avatar the Last Airbender has received a surge of popularity in the past few years, as it is considered one of the most popular cartoon shows to ever air. One of the characters, Sokka, is a teenage boy from the Southern Water tribe and has multiple tools and skills, like his boomerang, to save the […] Continue reading

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