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Astronomy For Dummies
Astronomy is fascinating, and people have been looking at the stars since the dawn of humanity. Start your study of astronomy by reviewing the accomplishments of the very first astronomers, and then continue looking at important historical markers of the Space Age. Women have played important roles in astronomy, so be sure to check out how their discoveries that have shaped what we know about space.
A Timeline of Astronomy
The study of astronomy is vast and encompasses a huge amount of information. This chart represents important events, like discoveries and inventions that have impacted astronomy through the ages:
| 2000 B.C. According to legend, two Chinese astronomers are executed for not predicting an eclipse and for being drunk as it happened. |
| 129 B.C. Hipparchos completes the first catalog of the stars. |
| A.D. 150 Ptolemy publishes his theory of the Earth-centered universe. |
| 970 al-Sufi prepares catalog of over 1,000 stars. |
| 1420 Ulugh-Beg, prince of Turkestan, builds a great observatory and prepares tables of planet and star data. |
| 1543 While on his deathbed, Copernicus publishes his theory that planets orbit around the sun. |
| 1609 Galileo discovers craters on Earth’s moon, the moons of Jupiter, the turning of the sun, and the presence of innumerable stars in the Milky Way with a telescope that he built. |
| 1666 Isaac Newton begins his work on the theory of universal gravitation. |
| 1671 Newton demonstrates his invention, the reflecting telescope. |
| 1705 Edmond Halley predicts that a great comet will return in 1758. |
| 1758 On Christmas, farmer/amateur astronomer Johann Palitzch discovers the return of Halley’s Comet. |
| 1781 William Herschel discovers Uranus. |
| 1791 Benjamin Banneker, the first African-American scientist, begins star observations needed for the geographical survey to establish the future capital city of the United States, Washington, D.C. |
| 1833 Abraham Lincoln and thousands of others see an enormous meteor shower over North America on November 12th and 13th. |
| 1842 Christian Doppler discovers the principle by which sound or light shifts in frequency and wavelength due to the motion of its source with respect to the observer. |
| 1846 Johann Galle is the first person to spot Neptune. |
| 1910 Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s Comet. |
| 1916 Albert Einstein proposes the General Theory of Relativity, which explains the nature of gravity and the bending of light as it passes the sun, predicts the existence of black holes, and details the twisting of time and space in the vicinity of a massive, spinning object. |
| 1923 Edwin Hubble proves that other galaxies lie beyond the Milky Way. |
| 1926 The first launch of a liquid-fuel rocket, developed by Robert Goddard. |
| 1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto. |
| 1931 Karl Jansky discovers radio waves from space. |
| 1939 Hans Bethe explains the energy source of the sun and other stars. |
| 1940 Grote Reber reports the first radio telescope survey of the sky. |
Famous Women in Astronomy
When you’re studying astronomy don’t forget the women that made an impact in the field. Check out this list of amazing achievements by women astronomers and astrophysicists:
| Historical: |
| Caroline Herschel: (1750–1848) Discovered eight comets. |
| Annie Jump Cannon: (1863–1941) Devised the basic method for classifying the stars. |
| Henrietta Swan Leavitt: (1868–1921) Discovered the first accurate method for measuring great distances in space. |
| Contemporary: |
| Jocelyn Bell Burnell: Discovered pulsars in her work as a graduate student. |
| E. Margaret Burbidge: Pioneered modern studies of galaxies and quasars. |
| Wendy Freedman: Leader in measuring the expansion rate of the universe. |
| Carolyn C. Porco: Leads the Cassini imaging science team in the study of Saturn and its moons and rings. |
| Sally Ride: A trained astrophysicist and the first American woman in space. |
| Nancy G. Roman: As NASA’s first chief astronomer, she led the development of telescopes in space. |
| Vera C. Rubin: Investigated the rotation of galaxies and detected the existence of dark matter. |
| Carolyn Shoemaker: Discovered many comets, including one that smashed into Jupiter. |
| Jill Tarter: Leader of the largest search for extraterrestrial intelligence, Project Phoenix. |
The Space Age
The Space Age, generally considered started by the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik, is defined by the events surrounding space exploration and development of space technology. This list maps out major events of the Space Age:
| 1957 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth; Geoffrey Burbidge, E. Margaret Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle explain how elements form in stars. |
| 1958 Using the satellite Explorer 1, James Van Allen discovers Earth’s radiation belts (magnetosphere). |
| 1960 Frank Drake begins the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. |
| 1961 Yuri Gagarin makes the first manned space flight. |
| 1963 Valentina Tereshkova is the first woman in space. |
| 1967 Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Anthony Hewish discover pulsars. |
| 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. |
| 1979 Using pictures from Voyager 1, Linda Morabito discovers erupting volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon, Io. |
| 1987 Ian Shelton discovers the first supernova since 1604 plainly visible to the naked eye. |
| 1990 The Hubble Space Telescope launches. |
| 1991 Alexander Wolszczan discovers planets orbiting a pulsar — the first known planets outside the solar system. |
| 1995 Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discover 51 Pegasi B, the first planet of a normal star beyond the sun. |
| 1998 Two astronomer teams discover that the expansion of the universe is getting faster, perhaps due to a mysterious force associated with the vacuum of space. |
| 1999 Mars Global Surveyor finds that Mars may have had an ocean at one time. |
| 2003 The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe satellite finds that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. |
| 2005 The Huygens space probe lands on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. |
