Astronomy 1021 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Deferent And Epicycle, Orbital Period, Ellipse

• School: Western University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: Astronomy 1021
• Professor: Robert Cockcroft

Document Summary

Civilizations have an advantage if they can track time/season (knowing when to plant and harvest) Archaeological remains re ect timekeeping practices (alignments with sun or equinoxes with stone henge) Even without any understanding of underlying principles, the ancient egyptians were. Ancient greek: take thinking to next level (and romans run with it) Dark ages: europeans ounder while ideas ourish in middle east. Scienti c revolution in europe: mid 16th to end of 18th century. Estrathenes: heard a report that one of the longest days of the year, shadows of columns disappeared in syene, egypt: sun is directly overhead. Aristarchus: found that the sun must be much larger than the earth. Probably because the sun was found to be much larger than the earth, aristarchus was the rst to propose a sun center (heliocentric) model for the universe. Also put planets in correct order of distance around sun.