History of astronomy

The work known as the Almagest, named in Greek Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις (Mathēmatikē Syntaxis), and also called the Syntaxis Mathematica, is a 2nd-century Greek mathematical and astronomical treatise on the apparent motions of the stars and planetary paths, written by Claudius Ptolemy (Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaúdios Ptolemaîos; c. AD 100 – c. 170).

An astrolabe (Greek: ἀστρολάβος astrolabos, "star-taker") is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers.

The Astronomia nova (full title in original Latin: Astronomia Nova ΑΙΤΙΟΛΟΓΗΤΟΣ seu physica coelestis, tradita commentariis de motibus stellae Martis ex observationibus G.V. Tychonis Brahe) is a book, published in 1609, that contains the results of the astronomer Johannes Kepler's ten-year-long investigation of the motion of Mars.

Harmonices Mundi (Latin: The Harmony of the World, 1619) is a book by Johannes Kepler.

Biblical cosmology is the biblical writers' conception of the cosmos as an organised, structured entity, including its origin, order, meaning and destiny.

The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model in the field of cosmogony to explain the formation and evolution of the Solar System.

Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism, is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the Solar System.

Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, cosmological, calendrical, and astrological beliefs and practices of prehistory: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not completely disentangled from it until a few centuries ago in the Western World (see astrology and astronomy).

A sundial is a device that tells the time of day by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky.

The Antikythera mechanism (/ˌæntᵻkᵻˈθɪərə/ ANT-i-ki-THEER-ə or /ˌæntᵻˈkɪθərə/ ANT-i-KITH-ə-rə) is an ancient analogue computer and orrery used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes, as well as the Olympiads, the cycles of the ancient Olympic Games.

An armillary sphere (variations are known as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a model of objects in the sky (in the celestial sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centred on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines of celestial longitude and latitude and other astronomically important features such as the ecliptic.

Planets in astrology have a meaning different from the modern astronomical understanding of what a planet is.

Cosmography is the science that maps the general features of the cosmos or universe, describing both heaven and Earth (but without encroaching on geography or astronomy).

An astronomical clock is a clock with special mechanisms and dials to display astronomical information, such as the relative positions of the sun, moon, zodiacal constellations, and sometimes major planets.

The definition of planet, since the word was coined by the ancient Greeks, has included within its scope a wide range of celestial bodies.

A star chart or star map is a map of the night sky.

In the history of astronomy, a handful of Solar System bodies have been counted as the fifth planet from the Sun.

Uranometria is the short title of a star atlas produced by Johann Bayer.

The Alfonsine tables (Spanish: Tablas alfonsíes, Latin: tabulae alphonsinae) (sometimes spelled Alphonsine tables) provided data for computing the position of the Sun, Moon and planets relative to the fixed stars.

The Copernican Revolution was the paradigm shift from the Ptolemaic model of the heavens, which described the cosmos as having Earth stationary at the center of the universe, to the heliocentric model with the Sun at the center of the Solar System.

The Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae was an influential astronomy book on the heliocentric system published by Johannes Kepler in the period 1617 to 1621.

Mysterium Cosmographicum (lit. The Cosmographic Mystery, alternately translated Cosmic Mystery, The Secret of the World or some variation) is an astronomy book by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, published at Tübingen in 1596 and in a second edition in 1621.

Hebrew astronomy refers to any astronomy written in Hebrew or by Hebrew speakers, or translated into Hebrew.

Ideas concerning the origin and fate of the world date from the earliest known writings; however, for almost all of that time, there was no attempt to link such theories to the existence of a "Solar System", simply because almost no one knew or believed that the Solar System, in the sense we now understand it, existed.

The earliest known working telescopes appeared in 1608 in the Netherlands and are credited to Hans Lippershey.

Lost lands can be continents, islands or other regions supposedly existing during prehistory, having since disappeared as a result of catastrophic geological phenomena or slowly rising sea levels since the end of the last Ice Age.