The advent of photography in the 19th century simplified the charting of the night sky and the stellar position catalogs quickly grew from a few thousand to tens of thousands of stars, according to ESA. In the 18th century, astronomers for the first time managed to calculate the distance of a nearby star, adding a third dimension to stellar catalogs. Despite the objections of the Catholic Church, the notion that Earth wasn't the center of the universe but orbited the sun together with other planets and their moons could no longer be denied.Īstronomy at that time played a key role in helping seafarers and travelers navigate the globe, and so, first, government-funded observatories, the Paris Observatory and the Royal Greenwich Observatory were established in 16 respectively with the goal of building more accurate stellar maps. The invention of the telescope supercharged astronomy. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was an early adopter and developer of the technology, which enabled him to make major strides in the understanding of our solar system.Ĭalled "the father of modern science" by no other than the great Albert Einstein, Galileo was able to sketch the surface of the moon, discover the main moons of Jupiter, find sunspots on the sun, and much more, thanks to the telescope. The first true breakthrough in humankind's exploration of the universe, however, arrived with the invention of the telescope in the 17th century. They also developed new tools for measuring the positions of objects in the sky such as the quadrant and the sextant, according to ESA. Islamic scholars kept building on the knowledge of the Ancient Greeks, expanding the catalog introduced by Hipparchus. (Image credit: Frank Vincentz) History of astronomy: The arrival of the telescopeĭuring the Middle Ages, the science of astronomy continued to advance in Asia and the Islamic world. The Nebra Disc, estimated to be 3,600 years old, is one of the oldest known artefacts depicting the night sky.
He also developed the brightness scale that is still in use today, according to ESA. Aristarchus of Samos made the first (highly inaccurate) attempt to calculate the distance of Earth to the sun and moon, and Hipparchus sometimes considered the father of empirical astronomy, cataloged the positions of over 800 stars using just the naked eye. In fact, according to the University of Oregon, astronomy can be considered the first science as it's the one for which the oldest written records exist.Īncient Greeks elevated sky-watching to a new level. systematically observed and recorded periodical motions of celestial bodies, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), and similar records exist also from early China. Art pieces depicting the moon and stars were discovered dating back several thousand years, such as the "world's oldest star map," the bronze-age Nebra disk.Īncient Assyro-Babylonians around 1,000 B.C. We can guess how drawn our ancestors were to that overwhelming sight from the role that sky-watching played in their lives.Īncient monuments, such as the 5,000 years old Stonehenge in the U.K., were built to reflect the journey of the sun in the sky, which helped keep track of time and organize life in an age that solely depended on seasons. Most of today's citizens of planet Earth live surrounded by the inescapable glow of modern urban lighting and can hardly imagine the awe-inspiring presence of the pristine star-studded sky that illuminated the nights for ancient tribes and early civilizations. Here is how the story of astronomy and our understanding of the universe evolved.
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