Archive for astronomy
You are browsing the archives of astronomy.
Asteroid Collision
It is possible (but not yet confirmed) that astronomers have observed a collision in the asteroid belt for the first time. Mystery Object Behaves Both Like a Comet and Asteroid – [discovery.com] Something awfully curious is happening 250 million miles away in the asteroid belt. Astronomers think they may be witnessing a never-before-seen collision between [...]
1546 – Brahe – bio
Tycho Brahe was born in 1546 in Sweden. He was an astronomer and alchemist who is known for his contributions to astronomy. While he was probably the last astronomer to work mostly without a telescope, he revolutionized the use of precise instrumentation in astronomy. Because of this precision, he was able to discover and document [...]
1048 – Omar Khayyam – bio
Omar Khayyam was born in Persia in 1048 and was a mathematician, astronomer and poet. He was known for using a geometric approach to analyzing algebra problems and for solving cubic equations using line segments. He noted that solving the cubic required the use of conic sections and could not be solved simply with a [...]
1521 – Taqi al-Din
Born in Damascus, Syria in 1521, Taqi al-Din was an all around scientist, exelling at astronomy, mathematics, physics, medicine, botany, and a wide variety of engineering applications. He was also a judge and religious philospher. He described a steam turbine engine in a book called, “The Sublime Methods of Spiritual Machines” in 1551. He invented [...]
0370 – Hypatia – bio
Hypatia was a Greek female mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, born around 370 in Alexandria, Egypt. She studied the works of Plato and Aristotle. Her father, Theon was a mathematician and philosopher at the University of Alexandria. She edited some of her fathers work and wrote commentaries on other works of the time, such as Euclid [...]
0085 – Ptolemy – bio
Claudius Ptolemaeus was born in Egypt around 85 as a Roman citizen. He was a mathematician, astronomer and geographer. He is famous for a series of books: Harmonics – on musical theory Optics – properties of light, including reflection, refraction and color Geography – used a coordinate grid system Tetrabiblos (four books) – on astrology [...]
1571 – Kepler – bio
Born in 1571 in the Stuttgart region of Germany, Johannes Kepler was a mathematician and astronomer. Kepler became the first published defender of the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. He described planetary orbits as platonic solids and then realized that the orbits are eliptical. Kepler studied the golden ration and wrote this about it: “Geometry has [...]
-3100 – Stonehenge started
A circular arrangement of large stones on Salisbury plain in Wiltshire county, England, Stonehenge was probably set up as a burial site and point for rituals of healing and worship. It was erected in stages over a period of at least one thousand years. Stonehenge, England Laugh not so lightly, King, for not lightly are [...]
0499 – Aryabhatiya
Aryabhata was an Indian mathematician and astronomer who wrote a text in Sanskrit that is known as the Aryabhatiya. It was written in poetic verse but nonethless is a compilation of Indian knowledge of astronomy and mathematics at the time. Through this text, Aryabhata became the father of the Hindu-Arabic system of numbering that we still [...]
-0287 – Archimedes – bio
Archimedes was a Greek engineer, inventor, mathematician and scientist born in Syracuse, Sicily around -287. He explained how the lever works, invented the “Archimedes screw” pump, and designed many military machines for attack and siege. He discovered how buoyancy in water works by displacement and this is now known as Archimedes Principle. He invented a [...]
