Timeline of solar system astronomy
Timeline of solar system astronomy
- 2136 BC[?] - Chinese astronomers record a solar eclipse
- 586 BC - Thales of Miletus predicts a solar eclipse
- 350 BC - Aristotle argues for a spherical Earth using lunar eclipses and other observations
- 280 BC - Aristarchus uses the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon to estimate that the Moon's radius is one-third that of the Earth
- 200 BC - Eratosthenes uses shadows to determine that the radius of the Earth is roughly 6,400 km
- 150 BC - Hipparchus uses parallax to determine that the distance to the Moon is roughly 380,000 km
- 134 BC - Hipparchus discovers the precession of the equinoxes
- 1512 - Nicholas Copernicus first states his heliocentric theory in Commentariolus
- 1543 - Nicholas Copernicus shows that his heliocentric theory simplifies planetary motion tables in De Revolutionibus de Orbium Coelestium
- 1577 - Tycho Brahe uses parallax to prove that comets are distant entities and not atmospheric phenomena
- 1609 - Johannes Kepler states his first two empirical laws of planetary motion
- 1610 - Galileo Galilei discovers Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io
- 1610 - Galileo Galilei sees Saturn's planetary rings but doesn't recognize that they are rings
- 1619 - Johannes Kepler states his third empirical law of planetary motion
- 1655 - Giovanni Cassini discovers Jupiter's great red spot
- 1656 - Christian Huygens identifies Saturn's rings as rings and discovers Titan and the Orion Nebula
- 1665 - Giovanni Cassini determines the rotational speeds of Jupiter, Mars, and Venus
- 1672 - Giovanni Cassini discovers Rhea
- 1672 - Jean Richer[?] and Giovanni Cassini measure the astronomical unit to be about 138,370,000 km
- 1675 - Ole Rømer uses the orbital mechanics of Jupiter's moons to estimate that the speed of light is about 227,000 km/s
- 1705 - Edmund Halley publicly predicts the periodicity of Halley's Comet and computes its expected path of return in 1758
- 1715 - Edmund Halley calculates the shadow path of a solar eclipse
- 1716 - Edmund Halley suggests a high-precision measurement of the Sun-Earth distance by timing the transit of Venus
- 1758 - Johann Palitzsch[?] observes the return of Halley's comet
- 1766 - Johann Titius[?] finds the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances
- 1772 - Johann Bode publicizes the Titius-Bode rule for planetary distances
- 1781 - William Herschel discovers Uranus during a telescopic survey of the northern sky
- 1796 - Pierre Laplace[?] states his nebular hypothesis for the formation of the solar system from a spinning nebula of gas and dust
- 1801 - Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the asteroid Ceres
- 1802 - Heinrich Olbers discovers the asteroid Pallas
- 1821 - Alexis Bouvard[?] detects irregularities in the orbit of Uranus
- 1825 - Pierre Laplace completes his study of gravitation, the stability of the solar system, tides, the precession of the equinoxes, the libration[?] of the Moon, and Saturn's rings in Mecanique Celeste[?]
- 1843 - John Adams predicts the existence and location of Neptune from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus
- 1846 - Urbain Leverrier predicts the existence and location of Neptune from irregularities in the orbit of Uranus
- 1846 - Johann Galle discovers Neptune
- 1846 - William Lassell[?] discovers Triton
- 1849 - Edouard Roche[?] finds the limiting radius of tidal destruction and tidal creation for a body held together only by its self gravity, called the Roche limit, and uses it to explain why Saturn's rings do not condense into a satellite
- 1856 - James Clerk Maxwell demonstrates that a solid ring around Saturn would be torn apart by gravitational forces and argues that Saturn's rings consist of a multitude of tiny satellites
- 1866 - Giovanni Schiaparelli realizes that meteor streams occur when the Earth passes through the orbit of a comet that has left debris along its path
- 1906 - Max Wolf[?] discovers the Trojan asteroid Achilles
- 1930 - Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto
- 1930 - Seth Nicholson[?] measures the surface temperature of the Moon
- 1950 - Jan Oort[?] suggests the presence of a cometary Oort cloud
- 1951 - Gerard Kuiper argues for an annular reservoir of comets between 40-100 astronomical units from the Sun, the Kuiper belt
- 1977 - James Elliot[?] discovers the rings of Uranus during a stellar occultation experiment on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory[?]
- 1978 - James Christy[?] discovers Charon
- 1978 - Peter Goldreich[?] and Scott Tremaine[?] present a Boltzmann equation[?] model of planetary-ring dynamics for indestructible spherical ring particles that do not self-gravitate and find a stability requirement relation between ring optical depth and particle normal restitution coefficient
- 1988 - Martin Duncan[?], Thomas Quinn[?], and Scott Tremaine[?] demonstrate that short-period comets come primarily from the Kuiper Belt and not the Oort cloud
1739 University Ave.
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
permitted by law. As the requirements for other states.html">states are met,
additional states.
All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
PMB 113
Oxford, MS 38655-4109 [USA]
***
If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see.html">see it, if
***
login: anonymous
cd pub/docs/books.html">books/gutenberg
dir [to see files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
**The Legal Small Print**
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
you may.html">may.html">may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm/tm.html">tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.html">trademark.
Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
.
On
wordlookup.net
All is still licensed under the GNU FDL.
It uses material from the wikipedia.
|
|