FAMOUS ASTRONOMERS

ARISTOTLE

• Aristotle though the earth was the center of everything and everything rotated around the earth
• His model of the Solar system had the earth as the center
• He didn't know that the position of the stars change so the earth was the center of the universe.

ARISTARCHUS

• He built one of the very fist heliocentric models
• His model was rejected at that time
• He attempted to measure the distance between the moon and the sun
• Also his ratio was off and wrong, it was still very important

PTOLEMY

• He had a book of planet observations of over 800 years ago
• He developed a geocentric model which we used for 1400 years
• He believed the planets rotated in a perfect circle
• He also believed that the planets rotated in a circle while they moved in a circle
• This system fit better than all other hypothesis befor

COPERNICUS

• He felt Ptolemy's model was way to complicated
• He was aware of the heliocentric idea's of Aristarchus
• He did his observing by eye
• He adopted Ptolemy's idea that the planets travel in circles
• He developed a heliocentric model

KEPLER

• He found that eclipses best fit the planet path
• He created Kepler's laws
• His First law is that planet orbits eclipses sun at center
• His second law is planets orbit faster when closer to sun
• His third law relates planet distance and full distance of the sun makes one orbit

GALILEO

• He made significant differences to a newly invented telescope
• He observed many different moons
• He made a more powerful telescope
• His observation showed earth was not the only planet orbiting the sun
• He gave significant support of the heliocentric model