AST201H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Scientific Method, Flashlight, Ptolemy

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST201H1
• Professor: Stephen Reid

Document Summary

A)humans are curious, we all know that, but ancient greeks, and the elder generation people used astronomy as a way of telling the weather. For example, in africa they use to observe the crescent moon, and look for the horns to tell whether it was going to rain or not. Knowing the weather then was important just as it is today because people needed to grow agriculture. B) they used the changing positions of stars, moons, and suns to determine what time it was , this is essential for agriculture marking seasons etc. C) luna calenders: some months have 29 days, while others have 30 days. They paid particular attention to those don"t forget that the sun (sunday), moon (monday) and. 5 other days are named after 5 other planets. This is the retrograde process motion, where other planets revolve around the sun.