History of Astronomy

Incans - 1200s

Winter and summer solstice

stone towers to mark the points of sunrise and sunset

Incan name - Mayu - meaning river

Points of a compas

Southern cross

Indigenous Australians - 50000 yrs ago

Sun Woman moves across the sky

Fat man killed by his wives and rises from the dead.

Sum Woman and Fat Man embrace - Solar eclipse

Fat Man runs from Sun woman - Lunar Eclipse

Ancient Greek

Astronomy

Greek meaning for Law and Order

Sun and moon revolved around the earth

Used 2000 years later

Early Middle Eastern

trigonometry to analyse the ecliptic plane

length of the year as 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 24 seconds

accurately calculated the angle of the Earth’s tilt using the plane of the ecliptic

Earth rotated on its axis

Earth moves around the sun over the course of a year

sun never sets in the North or South Pole

lunar year of 354 days

Jalali calendar

begins each year on 21 March

an error of one day in 3770 years

Renaissance - 1400s to the middle 1600s

greater the radius of a planet’s orbit, the longer it took for the planet to orbit around the sun

no more accurate in predicting the position of planets than Ptolemy’s model

motion of planets as ellipses

speed of an orbiting planet depends on its position in the elliptical orbit

planets more distant from the sun take longer to orbit the sun

Telescope

moons of Jupiter

four moons are known as the satellites Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto

Earth was clearly seen not to be at the centre of all planetary motion

He observed the moon and described the lunar surface as uneven, with craters and mountains

his observational, experimental and theoretical work provided the evidence that eventually led to rejection of the Aristotelian–Ptolemaic geocentric model of the universe.

NASA - 1962-2012

Mariner 2

Venus has an atmosphere containing mainly carbon dioxide

Venus rotates in the opposite direction to most of the other planets in our solar system

Venus has no detectable magnetic field

Venus has an extremely hot surface, over 425 °C

Mariner 4

First close-up photographs of another planet

The pictures, played back from a small video recorder, showed lunar type impact craters

Mariner 10

Mercury has a thin atmosphere with traces of the gases helium and hydrogen and even smaller amounts of several other gases

Viking 1 and 2

Ice caps at the poles

Made of frozen carbon dioxide and frozen water

Large Volcanoes

Dried-up riverbeds

Formed by water

May still be frozen water beneath the surface

Found essential elements for life

Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus

Water vapour was found to be relatively abundant in the far north during the summer, with the north pole covered permanently in ice

Pathfinder

first wheeled vehicle to be used on another planet in the solar system

Most technologically advanced rover ever built

Ancient Mars had the right chemistry to support living microbes

Organic matter was present on ancient Mars and has even survived intact to this day

Gale Crater was capable of supporting life 3.5 billion years ago

There are occasional spikes in methane gas that so far have no explanation

Curiosity found sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, key ingredients necessary for life, in the powder sample drilled from the "Sheepbed" mudstone in Yellowknife Bay

Surface samples taken from mars show that the dirt there is very similar to that of earth

The dirt on Mars may be capable of sustaining plants

Curiosity witnessed and made measurements through a planetary-wide dust storm

There might be microbial life on Mars

Cruiosity found an ancient stream bed

Mars used to have flowing water on its surface

Mars may be more similar to earth than we thought

Voyager 2

All gas giants had ring systems

Discovered and photographed many of the gas giants’ moons

Most distant human-made object ever to have travelled from the Earth

Neptune has system of five faint rings that appear to consist of dust particles

Neptune has a Large dark spot, similar to Jupiter

Larger than Earth

Is a giant storm

Discovered six moons

One of the moons, Triton is the coldest known body in the solar system.

Galileo

Detailed information on the moons of Jupiter

Discovered evidence of salt water below the surface of the moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto

New insights into the intensity of volcanic activity on the moon Io

Cassini Mission

Landed a probe on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, in 2005

Titan has an atmosphere, like that of Earth, contains both nitrogen and oxygen, but the oxygen is likely to be in the form of ice water

Atmosphere contains a mixture of complex organic molecules