ANCIENT

ASTRONOMY
• The Greeks are very much noted for their major contributions in different fields. They
were not only great philosophers. They were great scientists and mathematicians as
well.

• It was in Greece that the Golden Age of early astronomy was centered. Being
philosophers, the Greeks used philosophical arguments to explain the natural events
happening around them including the movements of the stars and other heavenly
bodies. But they were also observers. They made use of their observational data to
explain certain events. They were the ones who measured the sizes and the distances of
the sun and the moon using the basics of geometry and trigonometry which they also
developed.
• The early Greeks had a geocentric view of the earth. For them, it was the
center of the universe; hence, a motionless sphere. The sun, moon,
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn orbited the Earth.
• The Greeks also believed that stars traveled daily around the earth.
However, they all stayed in a transparent, hollow sphere located beyond
the planets. They called this sphere as the celestial sphere.
Key Terms
• Oblate spheroid: the shape of the Earth. It has bulging equator and squeezed
poles.
• Solstice: either of the two times in the year, the summer solstice and the winter
solstice, when the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky at noon,
marked by the longest and shortest days.
• Eclipse: an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of another
between it and the observer or between it and its source of illumination.
• Heliocentrism: the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve
around the Sun.
• Geocentrism: any theory of the structure of the solar system (or the universe) in
which Earth is assumed to be at the center of it all.
 Have you ever wondered what the philosophers in ancient astronomy thought
about the shape of the Earth?

 Around 500 B.C., most Greeks believed that the Earth was round, not flat. It
was Pythagoras and his pupils who were first to propose a spherical Earth.

 In 500 to 430 B.C., Anaxagoras further supported Pythagoras' proposal

through his observations of the shadows that the Earth cast on the Moon
during a lunar eclipse. He observed that during a lunar eclipse, the Earth's
shadow was reflected on the Moon's surface. The shadow reflected was
circular.

 Around 340 B.C., Aristotle listed several arguments for a spherical Earth
which included the positions of the North Star, the shape of the Moon and
the Sun, and the disappearance of the ships when they sail over the horizon.
NORTH STAR
The North Star was believed to be at a fixed position in the sky. However, when
the Greeks traveled to places nearer the equator, like Egypt, they noticed that the
North Star is closer to the horizon.

THE SHAPE OF THE SUN AND THE MOON

Aristotle argued that if the Moon and the Sun were both spherical, then perhaps,
the Earth was also spherical.

DISAPPEARING SHIPS
If the Earth was flat, then a ship traveling away from an observer should become
smaller and smaller until it disappeared. However, the Greeks observed that the
ship became smaller and then its hull disappeared first before the sail as if it was
being enveloped by the water until it completely disappeared.
 THE SIZE OF THE SPHERICAL EARTH

The Size of the Spherical Earth Ancient scholars tried to provide proof
of a spherical Earth and its circumference through calculations. It was
Eratosthenes who gave the most accurate size during their time.
While he was working at the Library of Alexandria in Northern Egypt,
he received correspondence from Syene in Southern Egypt which
stated that a vertical object did not cast any shadow at noontime
during the summer solstice. But this was not the case in Alexandria
where, at noon time during the summer solstice, a vertical object still
casts a shadow. These observations could only mean that the Sun,
during this time in Alexandria, was not directly overhead.
THE SIZE OF THE SPHERICAL EARTH
Eratosthenes then determined the angle of the Sun made with the
vertical direction by measuring the shadow that a vertical stick cast. He
found out that in Alexandria, the Sun makes an angle of 7.2° from the
vertical while 0° in Syene. To explain the difference, he hypothesized that
the light rays coming from the sun are parallel, and the Earth is curved.

From his measurements, he computed the circumference of the Earth to

be approximately 250 000 stadia (a stadium is a unit of measurement used
to describe the size of a typical stadium at the time), about 40 000
kilometers.
Our understanding about the different heavenly bodies can be credited to the important
findings of the following Greek astronomers:

a. Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras was able to explain what causes the phases of the moon. According to him,
the moon shone only by reflected sunlight. Since it is a sphere, only half of it illuminated
at a time. This illuminated part that is visible from the earth changes periodically.

b. Eudoxus
Eudoxus proposed a system of fixed spheres. He believed that the Sun, the moon, the
five known planets and the stars were attached to these spheres which carried the
heavenly bodies while they revolved around the stationary Earth.
c. Aristotle
Aristotle was a student of Plato. For him, the earth is spherical in shape since it always casts
a curved shadow when it eclipses the moon. He also believed that the earth was the center of
the universe. The planets and stars were concentric, crystalline spheres centered on the earth.

d. Aristarchus
Aristarchus is the very first Greek to profess the heliocentric view. The word helios means
sun; centric means centered. This heliocentric view considered the sun as the center of the
universe. He learned that the sun was many times farther than the moon and that it was much
larger than the earth. He also made an attempt to calculate the distance of the sun and the
moon by using geometric principles. He based his calculations on his estimated diameters of
the earth and moon and expressed distance in terms of diameter. However, the measurements
he got were very small and there were a lot of observational errors.
e. Eratosthenes
The first successful attempt to determine the size of the earth was made by him. He did this by
applying geometric principles. He observed the angles of the noonday sun in two Egyptian cities
that were almost opposite each other-Syene (now Aswan) in the south and Alexandria in the north.
He assumed they were in the same longitude.

f. Hipparchus
Hipparchus is considered as the greatest of the early Greek astronomers. He observed and
compared the brightness of 850 stars and arranged them into order of brightness or magnitude. He
developed a method for predicting the times of lunar eclipses to within a few hours. Aside from
this, he also measured the length of the year to within minutes of the modern value.

g. Claudius Ptolemy
He believed that the earth was the center of the universe. His Ptolemic Model claimed that the
planets moved in a complicated system of circles. This geocentric model also became known as the
Ptolemic System.
THE PTOLEMIC MODEL
THE PTOLEMIC MODEL

According to the Ptolemic Model, the sun, the moon, and the other planets
move in circular orbits around the earth. However, if observed night after
night, these planets move slightly eastward among the stars. At a certain
point, the planet appears to stop then moves in the opposite direction for
some time; after which it will resume its eastward motion. This westward
drift of the planets is called retrograde motion.

To justify his earth-centered model using retrograde motion, he further

explained that the planets orbited on small circles, called epicycles,
revolving around large circles called deferents