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Classical astronomy

Classical astronomy saw early advancements in Babylonian astronomy, which laid the foundations for later civilizations, including Greece, where significant developments like the heliocentric model emerged. Islamic astronomers in the post-classical period contributed by translating and expanding upon earlier works, establishing observatories, and making notable observations. Additionally, astronomy flourished in various cultures, including West Africa, challenging previous assumptions about the lack of astronomical activity in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Ages.

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13 views

Classical astronomy

Classical astronomy saw early advancements in Babylonian astronomy, which laid the foundations for later civilizations, including Greece, where significant developments like the heliocentric model emerged. Islamic astronomers in the post-classical period contributed by translating and expanding upon earlier works, establishing observatories, and making notable observations. Additionally, astronomy flourished in various cultures, including West Africa, challenging previous assumptions about the lack of astronomical activity in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Ages.

Uploaded by

Dannielyn Brecia
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Classical astronomy

A Babylonian planisphere (7th century BCE). Babylonian


astronomy made early advances in astronomy. Its use of sexagesimals (e.g. 12, 24, 60, 360) is
still being used today through having been broadly adopted for timekeeping and astrometry.[13]

As civilizations developed, most notably in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Persia, India, China,
and Central America, astronomical observatories were assembled and ideas on the nature of
the Universe began to develop. Most early astronomy consisted of mapping the positions of the
stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas
about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon and the Earth
in the Universe were explored philosophically.

Mesopotamia is worldwide the place of the earliest known astronomer and poet by
name: Enheduanna, Akkadian high priestess to the lunar deity Nanna/Sin and princess,
daughter of Sargon the Great (c. 2334 – c. 2279 BCE). She had the Moon tracked in her
chambers and wrote poems about her divine Moon.[14]

A particularly important early development was the beginning of mathematical and scientific
astronomy, which began among the Babylonians, who laid the foundations for the later
astronomical traditions that developed in many other civilizations.
[15]
The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a repeating cycle known as
a saros.[16]

Following the Babylonians, significant advances in astronomy were made in ancient Greece and
the Hellenistic world. Greek astronomy is characterized from the start by seeking a rational,
physical explanation for celestial phenomena.[17] In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of
Samos estimated the size and distance of the Moon and Sun, and he proposed a model of
the Solar System where the Earth and planets rotated around the Sun, now called
the heliocentric model.[18] In the 2nd century BC, Hipparchus discovered precession, calculated
the size and distance of the Moon and invented the earliest known astronomical devices such as
the astrolabe.[19] Hipparchus also created a comprehensive catalog of 1020 stars, and most of
the constellations of the northern hemisphere derive from Greek astronomy.[20] The Antikythera
mechanism (c. 150–80 BC) was an early analog computer designed to calculate the location of
the Sun, Moon, and planets for a given date. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not
reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.[21]

The Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars
rotating around it. This is known as the geocentric model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic
system, named after Ptolemy.[22]

Post-classical astronomy

Portrait of Alfraganus in the Compilatio astronomica,


1493. Islamic astronomers began just before the 9th century to collect and
translate Indian, Persian and Greek astronomical texts, adding their own astronomy and
enabling later, particularly European astronomy to build on.[23]

Astronomy flourished in the Islamic world and other parts of the world. This led to the
emergence of the first astronomical observatories in the Muslim world by the early 9th century.
[24][25][26]
In 964, the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galaxy in the Local Group, was described by
the Persian Muslim astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi in his Book of Fixed Stars.[27] The SN
1006 supernova, the brightest apparent magnitude stellar event in recorded history, was
observed by the Egyptian Arabic astronomer Ali ibn Ridwan and Chinese astronomers in 1006.
Iranian scholar Al-Biruni observed that, contrary to Ptolemy, the Sun's apogee (highest point in
the heavens) was mobile, not fixed.[28] Some of the prominent Islamic (mostly Persian and Arab)
astronomers who made significant contributions to the science include Al-Battani, Thebit, Abd
al-Rahman al-Sufi, Biruni, Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī, Al-Birjandi, and the astronomers of
the Maragheh and Samarkand observatories. Astronomers during that time introduced
many Arabic names now used for individual stars.[29][30]
It is also believed that the ruins at Great Zimbabwe and Timbuktu[31] may have housed
astronomical observatories.[32] In Post-classical West Africa, Astronomers studied the movement
of stars and relation to seasons, crafting charts of the heavens as well as precise diagrams of
orbits of the other planets based on complex mathematical
calculations. Songhai historian Mahmud Kati documented a meteor shower in August 1583.[33]
[34]
Europeans had previously believed that there had been no astronomical observation in sub-
Saharan Africa during the pre-colonial Middle Ages, but modern discoveries show otherwise.[35]
[36][37][38]

For over six centuries (from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into
the Enlightenment), the Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the
study of astronomy than probably all other institutions. Among the Church's motives was
finding the date for Easter.[39]

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