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Welcome to the Von Braun Astronomical Society

Welcome to the Von Braun Astronomical Society. What we’re going to do VBAS history and tonight’s team Advances in Astronomy in the Middle Ages Intro to night sky Tour of the facilities and observing!. Advances in Astronomy in the Middle Ages. 500 – 1600 CE.

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Welcome to the Von Braun Astronomical Society

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  1. Welcome to the Von Braun Astronomical Society

  2. What we’re going to do • VBAS history and tonight’s team • Advances in Astronomy in the • Middle Ages • Intro to night sky • Tour of the facilities and observing!

  3. Advances in Astronomy in the Middle Ages • 500 – 1600 CE

  4. Three key and interrelated aspects to keep in mind • Relevance and perspective • Astronomical history matters • 500 to 1500 years ago ! • Theory • Scientific vs. religious • Technology • Crude by today’s standards, but not too shabby and • essentially building blocks for present day

  5. What we won’t be talking about ! Native American Johannes Kepler 1571-1630 Galileo Galilei 1564-1642 Oriental Middle Eastern King Arthur ~ 480-540 … AND MANY, MANY OTHER PEOPLE AND CONCEPTS !!! Dragons

  6. What we will be talking about Why is Easter when it is and why the calendar had to be changed Nicolaus Copernicus What did we think the Solar System looked like and what Copernicus and Brahe did for this Churches and solar observations Tycho Brahe

  7. Easter and Time • Easter celebrates resurrection of Christ, which is known to have happened after the Last Supper – Jewish Passover Feast … based on lunar and solar cycles, therefore sometime around the spring equinox • Equinox – Latin for equal night. Commonly denotes the point at which the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away nor towards the Sun • Established by the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) to be the Sunday after the first full moon after vernal equinox • Bishops pre-calculated using Julian calendar, but this was really off with respect to real life so needed to figure out when the vernal equinox actually was!

  8. Change the Calendar! • Julian calendar (45 BC) based on 365 days divided by 12 months plus a leap day every 4 years for an average of 365.25 days … but it turned out to be 10 minutes off with the vernal equinox ! • New Gregorian calendar (Pope Gregory – 1582) based on an average of 365.2425 days per year … still have leap year every 4 years, but not on ’00 dates. Astronomy therefore was important … • Astronomy essentially helped you plan your year and determine time … sure clocks were around in the 1500s, but they weren’t precision pieces we know today ! • Bigger questions – what did our Solar System really look like?

  9. Ptolemeic Universe Essentially used for nearly 1500 years as a model Claudius Ptolemy ~ 90 – 168 AD Retrograde Motion Aristotle 384 – 322 BC

  10. Nicolaus Copernicus Copernican Universe Significant advancement from Ptolemy’s model, but still used circular rather than elliptical orbits … which were proposed later by Kepler Nicolaus Copernicus 1473-1543 Polish polymath (astronomer, mathematician, cleric, scholar, etc.)

  11. Tycho Brahe Uraniborg and Sterjnborg– Castle and observatory on Hven Tycho Brahe 1546-1601 Brahe’s Supernova SN 1572 in Cassiopeia Danish nobleman Astronomer, alchemist

  12. Equinoctal Sun’s Co-ordinates Arctic and Antarctic Circles Ecliptic Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn Tools invented or refined Armillary Sphere Sextants • Earth or Sun centered model of the sky • Origins date to 275 – 195 BC • Brache made significant improvements based on his model • Used primarily for measuring the • position of stars • Origins date to 990 AD • Quadrants

  13. And then spectacles became telescopes in the early 1600s and our window to the universe continued to burst wide open … but that is another story

  14. Questions ???Resources: Internet, library, VBAS websiteNext Month: Female astronomersThank you for coming to VBAS !!!

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