THE BIRTH OF MODERN ASTRONOMY

After the death of Copernicus, three astronomers – Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, and
Johannes Kepler – made significant contributions in modern astronomy. Each of them had a
difference approach. Tycho Brahe was a good collector of astronomical data. Kepler was a
mathematician and pure theorist, while Galileo was an experimentalist. Their contribution helped
prove that Earth is indeed not the center of the universe.

TYCHO BRAHE’S UNIVERSE

Tycho Brahe was considered the last and the greatest astronomer prior to the invention of
the telescope. At the age of 30, he was able to establish his own astronomical observatory in
Hven, located between Denmark and Sweden, under the patronage of Danish King Frederick II.
In his observatory, he accurately measured and recorded the position of the sun, the moon, and
the planets for 20 years. Realizing that his data did not fit into the models of Ptolemy and
Copernicus, he proposed his own model of the universe. In his universe, the sun orbited Earth,
while the other planets orbited the sun.

GALILEO’S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS

History had claimed that a refracting telescope was accidentally invented by Dutch lens
maker Hans Lippershey in 1608. Galileo, upon hearing of this invention without having seen it,
made his own telescope and aimed it at the skies. The following are some of the things he saw
with his telescope, all of which greatly contradicted thee models of Ptolemy and Aristotle and
provided new data that supported the Copernican model. These findings were published in 1610.
 The moon has mountains, valleys, and craters. This suggested that the moon is not
so different from Earth, implying that something in the celestial realm is barely
distinguishable from objects that belong to the terrestrial realm.
 The surface of the sun has some blemishes, which are now called sunspots. This
observation contradicted the Greek concept of the sun as being a perfece celestial
body.
 Jupiter has four moons revolving around it. This showed that not all heavenly
bodies revolve around Earth. There are other centers of revolution that are
themselves revolving.
 Venus has phases similar to those of the moon. This suggested that Venus is
merely illuminated by the light from the sun, and that it revolves around the sun.
The Ptolemaic model can accounted only for the crescent phase of Venus, not the
full range of phases he observed.
 Many stars too faint to be seen by the naked eye became visible with his
telescope. He observed that the Milky Way was simply made of individual stars.

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 Even when viewed through the telescope the stars still appeared to be points of
light. This provided evidence that the stars were extremely far away and that
observing stellar parallax is extremely difficult.

Science Bit
JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the largest and most powerful space
telescope ever built. Named after James Webb who led the Apollo missions, the JWST is the
successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. It can observe and gather data from visible green light
to the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum to study the formation of stars,
planets, and galaxies. JWST will be launched in October 2018. This project costs $8 billion,
including the cost of launching.

KEPLER’S LAWS OF PLANETARY MOTION

Johannes Kepler serves as an assistant to Tycho Brahe. He inherited thee numerous
observational data on planetary motion when Brahe died. Using Brahe’s extensive data on Mars,
Kepler was able to formulate his three laws of planetary motion. The first law is known as the
Law of Ellipses, which states that the planets move in ellipses having a common focus situated
at yhe sun. The other focus is empty. The closest point to the sun in a planet’s orbit is the
perihelion, the farthest point is called the aphelion.
The second law is the Law of Equal Areas. According to this law, the planets move
around the sun in such a way that a line drawn from the sun to the planet sweeps out equal areas
in equal intervals of time. For this to be true, the planet moves fastest at the perihelion and
slowest at the aphelion.
Kepler’s third law is known as the Law of Harmonies. It states that the squares of the
periods of the planets are proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. Period
is the time it takes to make one complete revolution around the sun. In symbols,
(T1/T2)2= (d1/d2)3

Where T1 and T2 aare the periods, and d1 and dw are the mean distances of planets 1 and 2 from
the sun respectively.
Planetary distances from the sun are normally expressed in astronomical units, or AU.
One AU is equal to the mean distance between Earth and the sun.
1 AU = 149597871 kilometers
~ 150000000 kilometers
The period of other planets is usually compared to that of Earth, which is a year. A year is
equal to 365.25 days.

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PROUDLY FILIPINO
At the age of three, Edmund Rosales became interested in astronomy after watching the
lunar landing of Apollo 1 in 1969. He became an “astronomer” at night and a full-time student
during the day. He finished BS Biology at Far eastern University in 1988, graduating as the
outstanding biology student. He proceeded to medical school but took time out when he was
offered a teaching job at the National Institute for science and Mathematics Education
Development (NISMED) at the University of the Philippines. For 13 years, Rosales worked as a
science education specialist at NISMED, training teachers in the basics of astronomy, and as
chief curator of the observatory. He undertook postgraduate studies in astronomy at Hiroshima
University in Japan, the Mission to Mars Astronaut Training Program in Australia, and the
Science education Training in Malaysia. He has received several local and international awards
such as the Padre Faura Astronomy Award in 1996 and the Meritorious achievement Award in
Cambridge, England. He is recognized in The International Who’s Who in Science. The National
Aeronautics and space Administration (NASA) included his name in the Stardust spacecraft that
landed on Comet Wild on January 4, 2004. Rosales was the former president off the Philippine
Astronomical Society and former vice president of the Astronomical League of the Philippines.
He is an active member of different international astronomical associations and organizations.
Today, he is the science and weather expert of a TV station, a world-class resource person for
astronomy, and an author of science books.

THE ANALEMMA
When viewed from a fixed position on Earth, the sun does not occupy the same position
in the sky at the same time every day in a year. This is due to the following reasons:
 Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit around the sun.
 Earth rotates about its axis once a day as it revolves around the sun once every
365.25 days.
 Earth’s orbit is elliptical. Earth moves fastest at the perihelion and slowest at the
aphelion.
The plot of the position of the sun as viewed from fixed position on Earth at the same
time every day in a year is called analemma. The analemma of the sun on Earth looks like the
figure 8, with one loop broader than the other. The broadness of the loop depends on the location
of the fixed position of the observer. Figure 6-17 is a plot of the position of the sun every 12:00
noon as viewed from the Greenwich Observatory in England in 2006.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM TODAY

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 The solar system is now viewed as consisting of eight planets, with the sun as its center,
and the planets revolve around the sun while spinning about their individual axis. Furthermore,
the solar system is made up of zones. The innermost zones are occupied by the terrestrial planets
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. These planets are rocky, metallic, and comparatively small.
The next zone is the asteroid belt, where leftover rocks from the formation of the solar system
can be found. Beyond the asteroid belt is the realm of the giant planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune –which are mostly gases. Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies the Kuiper Belt, which
consists of small celestial bodies. Pluto, which used to be a planet, is now classified as a “dwarf
planet”. In 2006, Pluto has an status as a planet because it is not the dominant object in its orbital
neighborhood. Aside from Pluto, four other dwarf planets are known today – Ceres, Haumes,
Makernake, and Eris.