Before 1500
This was considered to only extend barely past the objects in our own solar system.
What is the universe?
This is the formal name for the model of the sun at the middle of the solar system.
What is the heliocentric model?
This early astronomer wore a false nose and had an observatory with no telescopes, since they hadn't been invented yet.
Who is Tycho (Brahe)?
These extreme tides are caused by the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon acting together.
What are spring tides?
The orbits of the planets are ellipses with the sun at one focus.
What is Kepler's first law?
These include perfectly circular paths, constant speeds, and a geocentric model.
What are first principles?
He hesitated to publish his ideas about a sun-centered solar system due to his connections with the Roman Catholic Church.
Who is Copernicus?
This teacher devised three laws of planetary motion.
Who is Johannes Kepler.
The velocity needed to stay in a circular orbit, above the Earth it is about 17,400 MPH.
What is circular velocity?
This historical period saw the rise of modern science, including astronomy.
What is the Renaissance.
He created elaborate geometric and mathematical models to explain observed motions of heavenly bodies around the Earth.
Who was Ptolemy?
The first heliocentric model maintained this erroneous part of the earlier Ptolemeic models.
What is circular motion?
He didn't invent the telescope but he was among the first to use one to advance astronomy, and ultimately died on house arrest for disobeying orders to keep quiet about heliocentrism.
Who was Galileo?
Satellites that orbit with the rotation of the Earth and stay above a fixed spot.
What are geosynchronous satellites?
The law that describes the gravitational relationship between two objects and establishes how mass and distance are related.
What is the inverse square relation?
The geocentric model was accepted science for approximately this long.
These devices were added to Ptolomeic models to account for the apparent motions of Venus, Mercury, and Mars.
What are epicycles.
This Englishman advanced our understanding of gravity and established three laws of general motion that explained how objects interact.
Who is Newton?
The path that a cannonball fired from a high enough mountain with escape velocity follows.
What is a parabola?
The balancing point between two bodies orbiting each other.
What is center of mass?
These scholars first began to address errors in the Ptolemaic model.
Who were Islamic scholars?
This was published after the author's death in 1543.
What is "On the Revolutions of Celestial Spheres" (or "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium")
This astronomer was alive in 1666 when the Black Plague swept through London.
Who is Newton?
A theory that has been refined, tested, and confirmed so often that scientists have great confidence in it.
What is a natural law?
Newton's laws of gravity explain that an object in orbit around Earth stays in orbit due to horizontal velocity, because it is in effect in a perpetual state of this.
What is freefall.