Chapter II — The Birth of Astronomy
In the world today, by comparison to the long ages of the past, few people look up at the stars anymore. Most of us do not know their names, and even less of us have even the faintest idea of how to use them to tell the time of night, the time of year, or navigate using their predictable positions and motions.
Thousands of years ago, the Polynesians knew how to mark the latitude of islands in the Pacific, so they could find their way to them across the great empty expanse of the ocean. Today many struggle with using a GPS — much less the stars to navigate.
If a flat-earther explained to you how the Earth was a flat disc, do you know the actual proofs that tell us unequivocally that the Earth is a sphere?
In this chapter, we break down first the night sky, its major features, before exploring the deep roots of astronomy in ancient history and religion, before leading up to the birth of Modern Astronomy during the Renaissance with great thinkers like Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler.
Chapter Outline
- Understanding The Sky Above
- Ancient Astronomy
- [Astronomy Basics] How do we know the Earth is round?
- The Relationship Between Astrology and Astronomy
- The Birth of Modern Astronomy
Notes
“Much to your surprise, a member of the Flat Earth Society moves in next door. He believes that Earth is flat and all the NASA images of a spherical Earth are either faked or simply show the round (but flat) disk of Earth from above. How could you prove to your new neighbor that Earth really is a sphere? (When you’ve thought about this on your own, you can check later in the chapter for some suggested answers.)” [1]
“Today, few people really spend much time looking at the night sky. In ancient days, before electric lights robbed so many people of the beauty of the sky, the stars and planets were an important aspect of everyone’s daily life. All the records that we have—on paper and in stone—show that ancient civilizations around the world noticed, worshipped, and tried to understand the lights in the sky and fit them into their own view of the world. These ancient observers found both majestic regularity and never-ending surprise in the motions of the heavens. Through their careful study of the planets, the Greeks and later the Romans laid the foundation of the science of astronomy.” [1]