Major Contributors to Astronomy Tycho Brahe is known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations.Tycho Brahe was a Danish nobleman that made vital contributions to astronomy by inventing instruments to observe the sky before the invention or the telescope. In ancient times, Greeks believed that the sky was unchanging and that the stars they saw in the sky had been there since the beginning of time. On November 11, 1572 Tycho saw a star in Cassiopeia that he had never seen before. After a seeing of observations, he realized it was a supernova, which is a death of a massive star. His observations of planetary motion, mostly that of Mars, gave important data for astronomers to come, like Kepler.
Discovery of 51 Pegasi B In October 1995, a discovery was made by Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz that rocked the foundations of the professional planet seeking world. This discovery was that of a planet, 51 Pegasi B. My paper will focus on the path that two Geneva based astronomers took in discovering the existence of 51 Pegasi B. As the first men to find a planet that rotated so close to a star, they challenged the existing notions that planets could not exist in such close proximities to planets. Their discovery prompted astronomers around the world to look in places where planets were not found to exist and allowed us to further examine how a planet can exist at such extreme temperatures.
Scientific advancements such as heliocentricity and atomism disproved geocentricity and Aristotelian beliefs. The Catholic Church supported many of those views and anyone who opposed those beliefs were made instant targets of the pope and his follwers.4 Punishments were very severe, including house arrest, to discourage scientific advancement, but some refused to give in to church demands. Aristotelian belief was that the Earth was the center of everything, which tied well into the churches’ misunderstanding of several bible verses. This misunderstanding caused the church to strictly promote the idea of an Earth-centered universe.4 Many scientists were persecuted, but Galileo was the most notable. With him inventing the one of the first telescopes, he could see multiple areas of space never seen before such as Jupiter.
Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 but was as famous as any of the others by the time he died on January 8, 1642. In the 17th century, Galileo was the central figure of the scientific revolution. Galileo’s study in physics, philosophy, and astronomy arouse debate over the next 360 years after his death. When he was born, there was no such thing as “science”, however by the time he passed, science was well on its way to becoming a whole philosophical arrangement. In 1572, Galileo and his family relocated to Florence.
Throughout the thousands of years of humankind’s history, the magnetic power of curiosity made people make up various ways to find out the unknown and see the unseen, especially when it is naturally hidden from view. The mysteriously endless space with its stars, planets and constellations provoked the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei to analyze the nature of optical lenses and build his first telescope in 1609, thereby opening new horizons in optics and astronomy. Later, the secrets of micro life motivated the Dutch biologist Anton van Leeuwenhoek to use Galileo’s idea to create the light microscope in 1674, in which time period these were fascinating results: he was able to view the “invisible” world of living cells! Both of these instruments are based on the same principle of combining several optical lenses and enlarging the object by the use of light waves; the advent of the last of them has led to many considerable scientific discoveries and was improved many times over the next decades. However, the restriction of its operation to the wavelength of the used light wave made further improvements impossible: light microscopes are not capable of distinguishing objects tinier than half the wavelength of the smallest light wave – 0.0275 microns.
In the 1600’s, Galileo, backed up observations by Copernicus and published them. He took the punishment for it, even though he should not have. Back in the second century a Greek astronomer named Ptolemy, published a theory about the universe that said that the earth was at the center of the universe. This was widely accepted through Europe and the Middle East because it agreed with the church’s view on the universe. This theory had the earth at the center of the universe and all other planetary bodies orbiting the earth while the earth stayed still.
It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (38). The reader can infer that science to Frankenstein is religion from how he focuses on the subject and wants to know more of it in depth. Then he began to read the studies of Cornelius Agrippa but soon as his father told him not to waste his time reading that “sad trash” (40), he became furious and did not listen and read it anyway. He was so wound up in the studies of science, he did not heed his father’s advice and he did what he thought was best for
Terms to Know: Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment Scientific Revolution- a period when new ideas in physics, astronomy, biology, human anatomy, chemistry, and other sciences led to a rejection of doctrines that had prevailed starting in Ancient Greece and continuing through the Middle Ages. Copernicus, heliocentric view- He proposed a model of the solar system in which the planets orbit in perfect circles around the sun; his work ultimately led to rejection of the established geocentric cosmology. Tycho Brahe- a Danish astronomer whose observations of the planets provided the basis for Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Johannes Kepler- was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution. 3 laws of planetary motion- a Danish astronomer whose observations of the planets provided the basis for Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
The Scientific Revolution was a period in the 1500’s and 1600’s in which scientific thinkees challenged traditional ideas from the Catholic Church and relied on observation and experiments. They also believed that God controlled everything. European scholars accepted the theory of the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy. Ptolemy taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. Which is what the Catholic church also believed.
Martin Luther in On Christian Freedom wrote, “For Holy Scripture makes no distinction between them, except that those who are now boastfully called popes, bishops, and lords….” He said that Pope or bishop are no different than other people. The Condemnation of Wycliffe 1382 and Wycliffe's Reply, 1384, Wycliffe wrote, “That if a man has been truly repentant, all external confession is superfluous to him or useless.” Wycliffe presented his view on Catholic Church and was excommunicated by Pope Gregory XI because Wycliffe asserted that people do not need bishop for