STORY OF

ASTRONOMY
PSHS-ZRC
Objectives of this lesson:

1. Trace historical accounts from the

Golden Age of Astronomy
2. Differentiate the geocentric and
heliocentric models of the Solar Sytem
 Archaeoastronomy Structures
◦ El Caracol Observatory - Chichén Itzá – Mayans – Yucatan,
Mexico
El Caracol Observatory, Yucatan, Mexico
 Archaeoastronomy Structures
◦ El Caracol Observatory - Chichén Itzá – Mayans – Yucatan,
Mexico
◦ Angkor Wat Buddhist Temple – Hindu – Cambodia
Angkor Wat Buddhist Temple, Cambodia
 Archaeoastronomy Structures
◦ El Caracol Observatory - Chichén Itzá – Mayans – Yucatan,
Mexico
◦ Angkor Wat Buddhist Temple – Hindu – Cambodia
◦ Stonehenge – Neolithic descendants, Salisbury, United Kingdom
Stonehenge, Salisbury, United Kingdom
 Prehistoric Astronomy
◦ The earliest record of astronomical observations were by
the Babylonians at around 1600 BCE.
 Aurignacian Lunar Calendar.

Micronesian navigational
chart.
 CLASSICAL ASTRONOMY
◦ Around this time, most philosophers supported the geocentric model of
the universe. According to this idea, heavenly bodies like the sun, moon,
and stars are located on concentric spheres with Earth at the center where
all of heavenly bodies revolve around.
◦ Ptolemy collected and wrote down astronomical knowledge of ancient
Greek and Roman civilizations in his book The Almagest. Arab, Chinese,
Korean, and Japanese civilizations also kept detailed observations and
written records of astronomical observations of heavenly bodies. These
bodies of work contributed to the trove of information used during the
Renaissance dubbed arguably as the Golden Age of Astronomy.
RENAISSANCE ASTRONOMY
◦ Heliocentric model is introduced, by Nicolaus Copernicus in his book De
Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres)
◦ Johannes Kepler’s Three Laws of Planetary Motions:
◦ 1st Law: Planets follow elliptical orbits with the Sun located on one of its
focus.
◦ 2nd Law: Planet’s speed varies along its orbit such that an imaginary line from
the Sun to the planet sweeps equal areas in an equal amount of time.
◦ 3rd Law: The amount of time it takes a planet to complete its orbit (also called
period T) is proportional to its distance from the Sun cubed (d3).
RENAISSANCE ASTRONOMY

◦ Invention of Telescope by Galileo Galilei

MODERN ASTRONOMY

◦ Sir Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion and Law of

Universal Gravitation
◦ Advance types of Telescopes
◦ Albert Einstein work on general relativity