Man has studied the stars since the beginning of his time on earth. Even primitive man must have looked up into the heavens and been influenced by what he saw. In the ancient world, the stars were supposed to govern men?s lives. The horoscopes of early astrologers are echoed today in newspapers and magazines which tell their readers what experiences await them each week under their sign of the zodiac, which form the path of the sun as it appears to cross the sky, are very ancient.
Astrology let to astronomy, and it was often difficult to separate the two. This was particularly so in China where the first astronomers were very important people. They were called upon to make forecasts of such things such as an eclipse of the sun, and if they made a mistake in their predictions they were condemned to death.
The ancient Greeks from the time of Thales of Miletus, a philosopher who lived in the 6th century BC, began to look at the universe scientifically. Euclid invented geometry; Eratosthenes measured the distance round the earth; and Hipparchus, the first real astronomer, made a close study of the heavens and established the position of over 850 stars.
After the Greeks, the Arabs took up astronomy. According to their religion all true believers must kneel and face in the direction of Mecca, the sacred city of Arabia, when they pray. One of the most important reasons why Arabic astronomy developed was to establish the geological position of Mecca for the faithful, wherever they were in the world.
Modern astronomy began with Niclolas Copernicus, a Polish astronomer who lived from 1473 to 1543. It was he who first demonstrated that the sun was at the centre of the solar system and not the earth, as had been previously believed. Tycho Brahe, a Danish scientist, who also lived in the 16th century, became so famous that the king of Denmark built him the finest observatory in the world on an island near Copenhagen, called it the City of the Heavens.
But the most famous name in the history of early astronomy was that of Galileo, who died in 1642. Although he did not invent the telescopek, Galileo was the first man to make proper use of it, and in 1609 he became the first person to see an object in the sky as it really was. When he published his astonishing discoveries about the universe, he was put on trial by the pope, who said that his views were against the teaching of the church.
Another genius who devoted his life to to science was Isaac Newton 1642-1727, who is remembered for the story of the falling apple in his garden, which is supposed to have set his mind thinking about the problems of gravitation. He probably did more than any other man to show that astronomy is a science based on scientific reasoning. He invented the principle of the reflecting telescope, which is now used in the worlds? largest optical telescopes.
Today, astronomers reach far beyond the range of ordinary telescopes which ?see? into the heavens. Radio telescopes, which receive radio waves from bodies in outer space, were first experimented with in the 1930s. The principle of the original bowl-type radio telescope has now been developed into new types which use many aerials and extend over large areas.
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Source: http://www.basicedu.info/studied-the-astronomy.html
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