WEEK 1

UNIT 1: THE EARTH: ITS ORIGIN AND STRUCTURE

THE UNIVERSE AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The earth and other planets were formed at the same time according to the beliefs of many researchers.
TOPIC AND LECTURE

ANCIENT ASTRONOMY
• The Greeks used basic geometry and trigonometry to measure the sizes and distances of the largest appearing
bodies in heavens, the Sun and the Moon.
• They believed that the earth is at the center of the universe and it is sphere-shape. The moon, the sun, and the
planets are revolving around the earth.

The Greek Philosophers

Anaxagoras
• 499 BC to 428 BC
• Born in Clazomenae, Ionia (now Turkey)
• stated that the MOON is sphere – shape thus, it shines by only half reflected
sunlight at one time.
• Phases of moon and eclipses.
• Sun is a big hot rock.

Short Biography
• Anaxagoras was born to a wealthy family, but gave up his wealth to become a
scientist. He was the first Ionian to go to Athens, bringing the new Ionian
philosophical tradition to the Greek homeland. He becomes friends with
Pericles.
Importance to Astronomy
• Anaxagoras taught that the sun was a hot rock, and that the moon shone from
the reflected light of the sun. He also understands that eclipses are caused when
the moon passed through the shadow of the earth (a lunar eclipse) or when the
moon gets in between the sun and the moon (a solar eclipse.) He ends up in jail in
Athens for teaching that the sun and moon were not gods, but merely places.
Pericles gets him out of jail eventually.
• Anaxagoras does not believe in a divine intelligence that runs the universe. While
he does believe that there is some sort of life force that causes the universe, and all
in it, to run, this life force isn't by definition an intelligent thing. (Kind of like The
Force in Star Wars.)
• There is a great quote attributed to Anaxagoras. He was asked what was the
purpose in being born. He replied "The investigation of sun, moon, and heaven."

Aristotle
• 384 BC to 322 BC
• Born in Stagira, Greece
• Made the conclusion that the earth is spherical because it always casts a
curved shadow when it eclipses the moon.
• He knows that we see the moon by the light of the sun, how the phases of the
moon occur and understands how eclipses work.

Short Biography
• Aristotle was born in Stagira, Greece, in 384 BC. He was sent to be a student at
Plato's Academy, and eventually became a teacher there himself. He was the
tutor of Alexander the Great. When Plato died, and Aristotle was not chosen to
take over Plato's Academy, he formed his own school in Athens called the
Lyceum. Aristotle wrote about almost everything, including medicine, physics,
astronomy, biology, law, logic, and government, to name a few. Many of his
writings form the basis of Western thought.
Importance to Astronomy
• Aristotle knew that the earth was a sphere. Philosophically, he argues that each
part of the earth is trying to be pulled to the center of the earth, and so the earth
would naturally take on a spherical shape. (Gravitationally, this is actually
 accurate!) He then points out observations that support the sphericalness of the
earth. First, the shadow of the earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always
circular. The only shape that always casts a circular shadow is a sphere. Second, as
one travelled more north or south, the positions of the stars in the sky change.
There are constellations visible in the north that one cannot see in the south and
vice versa. (He uses this to also argue that the earth isn't very big, because you
don't have to travel very far to notice the difference.) Third, he says not to discount
those who say that Morroco and India are really close to each other, because there
are elephants in both of these regions. (De Caelo, Book II Part 14)
• Aristotle talks about the work of Eudoxus and Callippus, who had developed an
earth centered model of the planets. In these models, the center of the earth is the
center of all the other motions. While it is not sure if Eudoxus and Callippus
actually thought the planets moved in circles, Aristotle certainly does. Aristotle
even adds "counteracting spheres" so that the motion of one sphere doesn't
interfere with the motion of the one next to it. To Aristotle, the many spheres that
carry the planets, including the sun and moon, are very real, and he says there are
55 of them. (Metaphysics, Book XII, Part 8)
• Aristotle rejects a moving earth for two reasons. Most important is that he doesn't
understand inertia. To Aristotle, the natural state for an object is to be at rest. He
believes that it takes a force in order for an object to move. Using Aristotle's ideas,
if the earth were moving through space, if you tripped, you would not be in contact
with the earth, and so would get left behind in space. Since this obviously does not
happen, the earth must not move. This misunderstanding of inertia confuses
people until the time of Galileo. A second, but not as important, reason Aristotle
rejects a moving earth is that he recognized that if the earth moved and rotated
around the sun, then "there would have to be passings and turnings of the fixed
stars": the positions of the stars would change with the seasons. (De Caelo, Book II,
part 14) In modern words, there would be an observable parallax of the stars. One
cannot see stellar parallax with the naked-eye, so Aristotle concludes that the earth
must be at rest. (The stars are so far away, that one needs a good telescope to
measure stellar parallax, first measured in 1838.)
• Aristotle believes that the objects in the heavens are perfect and unchanging. Since
he believes that the only eternal motion is circular with a constant speed, the
motions of the planets must be circular. This comes to be called "The Principle of
Uniform Circular Motion" and even Copernicus believes in it. The perfectness and
constancy of the heavens ends up being challenged in the late 16th century when
Tycho Brahe shows that a supernova and a comet are beyond the orbit of the
moon.
• Aristotle and his ideas become very important because they become incorporated
into the Catholic Church's theology in the twelfth century by Thomas Aquinas. In
the early 16th century, the Church bans new interpretations of scripture in a
defensive move against the growing Protestant movement. At the time, there had
been no interpretations involving a moving earth; thus teaching a non-geocentric
model of the solar system becomes a bad thing to do.

ARISTARCHUS
• The scientist who professed the heliocentric, (Helios=Sun, centric =centered).
• c310 BC to c230 BC
• Born in Samos
• Professed the heliocentric, (Helios=Sun, centric=centered) ; Heliocentric
theory.
• Relative distance to moon and sun.
• Relative sizes of earth, moon and sun.

Short Biography
• Born in Samos, not a lot is known about Aristarchus. Most of his work is lost,
and we only know about him because other ancient Greek people talked about
him.
Importance to Astronomy
• Only one book of Aristarchus survives, "On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun
and Moon." In it he proves:
o The distance to the sun is greater than 18, but less than 20, times the
distance to the moon.
o The radius of the sun is greater than 18, but less than 20, times greater
than the radius of the moon.
o The radius of the sun is greater than 19/3 (6.3), but less than 43/6 (7.2),
times the radius of the earth.While the results are off, his basic geometry
 and methods are sound. (Actually, the sun is about 400 times farther than
the moon, and about 109 times bigger than the earth.)
• Aristarchus' method for determining the relative distances to the moon and the
sun is pretty easy to understand. Imagine drawing a triangle by connecting the
centers of earth, moon and sun, When the moon is "exactly" 1/2 full, and looks like
a semicircle, then the angle earth-moon-sun is 90, so that the distance between the
earth and the sun is the hypoteneuse of the right triangle. One just has to measure
the angle theta in the diagram, and we can say that the ratio of the distance to the
moon to the distance to the sun is equal to the cosine of theta.
• Aristarchus said that the angle theta was 87, which is too small. It turns out that
the angle would be just under 90. In practice, it is also difficult to accurately decide
when the moon is exactly half full, and so difficult to accurately measure the angle,
so while the method is correct, it turns out to be difficult to do.
• Aristarchus notes that the angular size of the moon and sun are the same, which is
basically true. Because of this, if the sun is about 19 times farther away than the
moon, then it must be about 19 times larger.Having calculated how much farther
away the sun is than the moon, Aristarchus is then able to calculate how much
bigger the sun is than the earth. To do this, he notes that during a lunar eclipse,
when the moon enters the shadow of the earth, the size of the shadow is about
twice the size of the moon. (Again, his data is a little off: it is closer to 3 times the
size of the moon.) The image below show the moon, earth and sun during a lunar
eclipse.

Ds = Distance to the sun; Dm = Distance to the moon; and D = Distance

from earth to apex of its shadow.
Rs = Radius of sun; Re = Radius of the earth; and R = Radius of the
earth's shadow at the moon's position.

HIPPARCHUS
• 190 BC to c120 BC
• Born in Nicaea, Bithynia (now Turkey)
• determined the location of almost 850 stars which he divided into six groups
according to their brightness.
• Determines the length of the year.
• Discovers the Precession of the Equinoxes.
• He measured the length of the year to within minutes of the modern value and
developed a method for predicting the times of lunar eclipses within a few hours.
• Applies epicycles to the sun and moon.
Short Biography
• Very little is known about Hipparchus. None of his major work survives, and
most of what is known is due to what Ptolemy says in the Almagest. He was
born in Nicaea, which is now the modern town of Iznik in Turkey. He lived
and worked in Rhodes and Alexandria.
Importance to Astronomy
• Hipparchus is often called the first real astronomer, as he was the first Greek
to actually make systematic observations of the sky. He was also a very
talented mathematician who made great strides in the development of the
classic Greek model of the solar system.
• Hipparchus catalogs the position and brightness of over 800 stars. He was
the first person to record the actual angular positions using the ecliptic as a
base line. He ranked the stars according to a brightness scale of six
magnitudes.
• He discovered the slight wobble in the axis of the earth's rotaion, also called
the "Precession of the Equinoxes." The axis of the earth's rotation currently
points to a spot near the Polaris - hence it is called the North Star as it
doesn't move very much over the course of the night. Because of a slight
gravitational effect, the axis is slowly rotating with a 26,000 year period, and
Hipparchus discovers this because he notices that the position of the
equinoxes along the celestial equator were slowly moving.
• He calculates the length of the year to be 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes and
12 seconds long and calculates his error to be no more than 15 minutes. (It
turns out he was only 6 minutes off.)
• He also came up with another way to determine the distance to the moon.
Using parallax, he was able to calculate that the moon was between 59 and
67 earth radii away. (The correct average distance is 60.) He did this from a
solar eclipse. During a solar eclipse, the moon just covers the sun (remember
that they are both about 1/2 degree in angular size.) However, only a very
 small portion of the earth can actually witness the eclipse in totality, because
the shadow of the moon on the earth is fairly small. Hipparchus used data
from a solar eclipse viewed from 2 different locations. The diagram below
would represent a solar eclipse as viewed from 2 different places on the
earth, labeled A and B.

Claudius Ptolemy
• C85 to C165
• Born in Alexandria, Egypt
• presented the geocentric outlook of the Greeks in its most sophisticated model
that became known as Ptolemaic system.
• Culmination of Greek Astronomy and Geocentric model of solar system
• Wrote Syntaxis aka the Almagest
• 1st working predictive model of solar system

Short Biography
• Very little is known of Ptolemy's life. He most likely grew up in or near
Alexandria, where he studied mathematics and astronomy. While he is
most known for his work in mathematical astronomy, he wrote a
number of other books that have survived,
including Optics and Geography, which was an attempt to make a map
of the world as known by Ptolemy with latitude and longitude
measurements.
Importance to Astronomy
• Ptolemy wrote the Almagest around 150 AD. The
name Almagest actually comes from the latinized version of the Arabic
name for his work, al-majisti, meaning "the greatest." The Greek
name, Syntaxis, is short for its original title, The Mathematical
Compilation.
• With the Almagest, Ptolemy produced the first working, predictive
model of the solar system in the world, and was the culmination of
Greek astronomy and the geocentric model. The Almagest was a
complete textbook in mathematical astronomy, and was so successful
that it became the standard in mathematical astronomy for 1400 years.
The Almagest itself was broken into 13 chapters. He begins by teaching
all the mathematics that is needed for the computations in the book,
and then goes on to give detailed descriptions of how to make
astronomical observations and mathematical models for the sun,
moon and planets.
• He includes mathematical tables and star charts, and explains how to
improve on observational data.
• He describes how to make any astronomical calculation that one may
want.
• He improved on the work of Hipparchus, and produced the first
complete working and predictive model of the solar system, and it was
the basis for mathematical astronomy until the sixteenth century
when Copernicus introduced his heliocentric model of the solar
system.
• The Greek geocentric model is still often called the Ptolemeic system
in honor of this achievement.

Activity 1
WORD HUNT
Filling in the letters required to identify whose’ philosopher are referring to.

A U I P O L M
1. Predictive model of the solar system in the world, and was the culmination of Greek astronomy and the
geocentric model.
I S A C U

2. Professed the Heliocentric theory, (Helios=Sun, centric=centered). Method for determining the relative
distances to the moon and the sun is pretty easy to understand. Imagine drawing a triangle by connecting the
centers of earth, moon and sun, when the moon is "exactly" 1/2 full, and looks like a semicircle, then the angle
earth-moon-sun is 90, so that the distance between the earth and the sun is the hypoteneuse of the right
triangle.
 H P A C S
3. He measured the length of the year to within minutes of the modern value and developed a method for
predicting the times of lunar eclipses within a few hours.
A X O A
4. Taught that the sun was a hot rock, and that the moon shone from the reflected light of the sun. He also
understands that eclipses are caused when the moon passed through the shadow of the earth (a lunar eclipse) or
when the moon gets in between the sun and the moon (a solar eclipse.) He ends up in jail in Athens for teaching
that the sun and moon were not gods, but merely places. Pericles gets him out of jail eventually.
A I T E
5. He then points out observations that support the sphericalness of the earth. First, the shadow of the earth on
the moon during a lunar eclipse was always circular. The only shape that always casts a circular shadow is a
sphere. Second, as one travelled more north or south, the positions of the stars in the sky change. There are
constellations visible in the north that one cannot see in the south and vice versa.

Activity 2

1. Choose from the following philosopher. Who among them telling a truthful concept about the origin of
the earth. Why?
2. Define Modern Astronomy?
3. Enumerate the following scientist that continue the studies about the origin of the earth, solar system
and the heavenly Bodies.