Astronomy 161 Introduction to Solar System Astronomy Prof. Paul Martini

Unit 3: Rise of Modern Astronomy

Lecture 11: Greek Astronomy [Jan 20]

Lecture 12: Copernican Revolution [Jan 21]

Lecture 13: Brahe and Kepler [Jan 22] Section 3.2, Kepler's Laws Animation

Lecture 14: Galileo [Jan 25]

Lecture 15: Newton [Jan 26] Section 3.3, Newton's Laws Animation

Related Readings:

Readings and Animations from 21st Century Astronomy as noted above

Unfortunately our textbook does not cover the historical development of modern astronomy, but below are several web links with more information about these topics.

Web links for Further Exploration in Unit 3

There is an excellent online version of the Library of Congress' exhibit on the Vatican Library. I recommend these pages on Greek Astronomy and Greek Mathematics.

The Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland has the original, handwritten version of Nicholas Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium online.

The Galileo Project contains a wealth of information about Galileo, as well as many of his contemporaries.

Photographs of every page of a 1st edition of Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius

Here are short, biographical sketches of Tycho Brahe and Isaac Newton.

The links to the lectures reproduce the electronic overheads shown in class for each of the lectures. In some cases they have additional text and links covering supplemental material or graphics. Online lecture notes are made available starting the week in which the lectures occur, but some notes may not be accessible until later in the week if I am having problems translating them into a web-accessible form.

Please feel free to print out copies of these lecture outlines in advance of class, so you can follow along with the lecture. Many students find this helps them listen without the pressure of taking down detailed notes of their own, but while still making additional notes in the margins to highlight particularly emphasized points.

See A Note about Graphics to learn why some of the graphics shown in the lectures are not reproduced with these notes.

Students looking to explore these topics further using the Internet might want to look at Prof. Richard Pogge's Selected Astronomical Internet Links for this unit.

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Updated: 2010 January 23
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