Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Northern Hemisphere page from Johann Bayer's 1661 edition of Uranometria - the first atlas to have star charts covering the entire celestial sphere Southern Hemisphere. The history of astronomy focuses on the contributions civilizations have made to further their understanding of the universe beyond earth's atmosphere. [1]
The earliest direct evidence of life are stromatolites found in 3.48 billion-year-old chert in the Dresser formation of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. [4] Several features in these fossils are difficult to explain with abiotic processes, for example, the thickening of laminae over flexure crests that is expected from more sunlight. [57]
The first major Arabic work of astronomy is the Zij al-Sindh by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. The work contains tables for the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known at the time. The work is significant as it introduced Ptolemaic concepts into Islamic sciences. This work also marks the turning point in Arabic astronomy.
c. 16th century BCE – Mesopotamian cosmology has a flat, circular Earth enclosed in a cosmic ocean. [1]c. 15th–11th century BCE – The Rigveda of Hinduism has some cosmological hymns, particularly in the late book 10, notably the Nasadiya Sukta which describes the origin of the universe, originating from the monistic Hiranyagarbha or "Golden Egg".
Babylonian astronomy was "the first and highly successful attempt at giving a refined mathematical description of astronomical phenomena." [2] According to the historian Asger Aaboe, "all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West—if not indeed all subsequent endeavour in the exact sciences—depend upon Babylonian astronomy in ...
Counting them among the planets became increasingly cumbersome. Eventually, they were dropped from the planet list (as first suggested by Alexander von Humboldt in the early 1850s) and Herschel's coinage, "asteroids", gradually came into common use. [139] Since then, the region they occupy between Mars and Jupiter is known as the asteroid belt.
The ancient Hebrews, like all the ancient peoples of the Near East, believed the sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets and stars embedded in it. [4] In biblical cosmology, the firmament is the vast solid dome created by God during his creation of the world to divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear.
Jeremiah Horrocks was born at Lower Lodge Farm in Toxteth Park, a former royal deer park near Liverpool, Lancashire. [5] His father James had moved to Toxteth Park to be apprenticed to Thomas Aspinwall, a watchmaker, and subsequently married his master's daughter Mary.