The Great Astronomers - The Early Star Gazers - Part I

I'm a star gazer, albeit a late one blooming one, and this got me to thinking about how long ago, before civilization began, the first people who roamed the earth must surely have wondered about the warm sun as it rose each morning with never failing light. It is not hard to imagine that they worshiped this life giving body or that they gazed with reverence upon the starry skys, the Milky Way, and even perhaps the dancing Northern Lights.

I can picture the terror that must have filled their hearts whenever an eclipse blotted out the sun or a fiery meteor was hurled to earth. Surely they must have asked themselves what all these strange things were.

Mankind has never been content merely to ask questions. Like curious children, we demand answers. Guided by our own vivid imaginations, I'm certain that early people soon found reasons fro the strange behavior of the skies. They invented fantastic stories and declared that the far off heavenly bodies had power to affect the destinies of men.

However, that was not all the vast heavens meant to these distant forefathers of ours who at the dawn of civilization might well have been called the first astronomers. In their own primitive way they began to harness the distant heavens to their own use. They learned to measure time by the sun. Hunters and travelers discovered how to guide their way by the stars at night. the earliest farmers figured their planting seasons by the moon.

Thus, so it was that mankind began to lay the corner stones of astronomy which long ages later inspired great minds to a scientific study of the stars -- a guide which was finally to explain away all the superstitions that haunted the skies.

Three thousand years before the birth of Christ (about the time written history began) in Babylonia (Chaldea) and Egypt, in India and China, many uses of astronomy were being developed.

From the careful studies of the sun the Egyptians counted three hundred and sixty-five days to the year. The heavenly bodies were used in measuring land and planning buildings.

Babylonia was the mother-country of astrology, which preceded astronomy. There the seven day week was marked off, and the day, with twelve double hours. As far back as 1200 B.C. the Phoenicians steered their way by the sun and stars across the open sea.

About this same time the Chaldeans, though not with the accuracy of modern astronomers, were already foretelling eclipses. In these early years before the birth of Christ, the Greeks gave a special name to five of the stars which move in the sky. These they called planets -- the Greek word for "wanders."

Although many attempts were made to explain the skies, it was not until the time of Thales, who lived from about 640 B.C. to about 550 B.C. that astronomy was first studied as a science. Thales was born in Miletus, a Greek city in Asia Minor, but he traveled much in Greece proper, Crete and Egypt.

One of the seven wise men of ancient Greece, he was the first to realize that the stars were more than mere signs in the sky to be translated into fantastic means. Thales founded the earliest school of Greek philosophers, he developed geometry and put it to such practical uses as measuring the height of trees or buildings and determining the distance of ships at sea.

He drew maps of the most noticeable stars as they appeared in the heavens -- a task which no man before him ever attempted. In 585 B.C. he foretold an eclipse of the sun and when the heavens proved the amazing accuracy of his prediction he rose to a fame that has lived through the ages.

About two hundred years after the death of Thales, another distinguished school of Greek learning began of Greek learning began to flourish outside Greece proper, at Alexandria, in Egypt. There the study of the heavens was advanced.

Aristarchus, who lived from 310 to 250 B.C. was a Greek from the island of Samos. He was a teacher at Alexandria. He was the first to proclaim that the sun stands still and the earth revolves around it. He also taught the theory of an earlier Alexandrian -- Heraclides -- that the earth spins on its own axis. Eratosthenese (about 350 B.C.) estimated the size of the earth, and reached a figure within only a few hundred miles from the truth.

Timocharis, who lived about 300 B.C. drew a line from east to west across a sandy plain, and watched the sun's rising and setting north and south of the line. The days in which the sun rose and set exactly on the line were the equinoxes. The sun's annual course among the stars was also charted at the school of Alexandria.

Hipparchus, another Alexandrian Greek born about 160 B.C. was one of the two greatest astronomers of the ancient world. He built upon the work of the earlier astronomers and he was famous for his accurate observations of the skies and his discovery of the precession of the equinoxes caused by the wobbling of the earth on its axis.

According to their brightness he classified and made a list of over one thousand fixed stars, basing some of his work on the observations of former star gazers.

He developed that branch of mathematics known now as trigonometry, which he used in his accurate calculations of the length of the seasons and the motions of the planets and moon -- truly great discoveries for his time, when we think that he worked without the aid of any modern instruments.

The other great astronomer of the ancient world was known as Claudius Ptolemaeus (better known as Ptolemy). He was a Greek born in the second century after Christ. He lived in Alexandria, and was by far the most brilliant teacher of the Alexandrian school.

He made a famous geography of the world with maps. He developed the study of trigonometry as an aid to navigation and astronomy. Yet, this scholar retarded the development of scientific astronomy in the centuries that followed his time. Unfortunately for progress, the world accepted without question his teachings that the earth was stationary -- the center of the universe around which the sun, the moon, and the planets all revolved.

It was not until the sixteenth century that anyone doubted his findings and proved them wrong.

However, all Ptolemy's deductions were not incorrect, for he gave to the world the theory of the moon's motion as it travels in its orbits. He also discovered that light from a distant star changes its course upon entering the earth's atmosphere.

Ptolemy wrote a book on astronomy, setting forth all that was known and believed about the heavens in his day. It became the textbook of astronomy for hundreds of years.

In the ninth century Arab scholars translated it into their language and called it Al Magisti (The Greatest). From Arabic it was translated back into Greek and Latin and so into other languages, but it has retained a Latin form of its Arabic name, Almagestum. English writers called it the Almagest.

After the death of Ptolemy we find a few important names in the history of astronomy. Those who sand out are Arabs for they were the world's greatest scholars in all the branches of science, especially from the eighth to the twelfth centuries.

Al Batani (about 880 A.D.), Ibn Junis (about 1000 A.D., Abul Wefa (about 1000 A.D.), and Ulugh Beg (he belonged to a later day, around 1400) are illustrations of illustrious Arabic scholars who made significant contributions to the study of astronomy, chiefly through improvement of mathematical measurements.

Omar Khayyam, the Persian (who lived around 1100) is best known to the world today as a poet. Yet, he was a serious scholar and astronomer. He improved the Persian calendar, and did much work in mathematics. In his early life he was the maker of tents and the name "Khayyam" actually means tent-maker -- was given to him then.