Search Results: Astronomy

Ancient China had seen little Western contact before the 16th century CE, the language, culture and science all being allowed to develop independently of foreign influence. By the time European Jesuit missionaries arrived in the 16th century...

Ancient Greek astronomy was the study of the universe to understand how it functioned and why apart from the established theistic model that claimed all things were ordered and maintained by the gods. Ancient Greek astronomers relied on observation...

The astronomers of the Scientific Revolution rejected long-held theories of ancient thinkers like Claudius Ptolemy and Aristotle and instead set out to systematically observe the heavens in order to create a model of the universe that fit...

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German astronomer and mathematician most famous for creating what was up to that point the most accurate model of planetary astronomy with his three laws of planetary motion. Kepler was the first to present...

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was a Danish nobleman who made the most significant contribution to our knowledge of astronomy before the telescope arrived. He discovered a supernova, observed the elliptical interplanetary orbit of a comet, updated...

Hellenistic astrology encompassed various forms of divination in Greece and the Mediterranean, all linked to the observation of astronomical phenomena. Hellenistic astrology was based on the belief that the stars and planets could either...

Hipparchus of Nicea (l. c. 190 - c. 120 BCE) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician regarded as the greatest astronomer of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time. He is best known for his discovery of the precession...

Menelaus of Alexandria was a Greek astronomer, scientist, and mathematician who lived around 100 CE. Menelaus made a significant and lasting contribution to the fields of astronomy, geometry, and trigonometry. His major work, the Spherics...

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) was a Polish astronomer who famously proposed that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun in a heliocentric system and not, as then widely thought, in a geocentric system where the Earth is...

The foundation of observatories during the Scientific Revolution (1500-1700) followed a process of evolution from entirely independent observatories operated by a single astronomer to private observatories which received state or private...