Related Research Articles
Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These works also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole.
Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus, was a prominent English Paracelsian physician with both scientific and occult interests. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist and Rosicrucian.
Sidereus Nuncius is a short astronomical treatise published in Neo-Latin by Galileo Galilei on March 13, 1610. It was the first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope, and it contains the results of Galileo's early observations of the imperfect and mountainous Moon, of hundreds of stars not visible to the naked eye in the Milky Way and in certain constellations, and of the Medicean Stars that appeared to be circling Jupiter.
Pierre Gassendi was a French philosopher, Catholic priest, astronomer, and mathematician. While he held a church position in south-east France, he also spent much time in Paris, where he was a leader of a group of free-thinking intellectuals. He was also an active observational scientist, publishing the first data on the transit of Mercury in 1631. The lunar crater Gassendi is named after him.
The year 1631 in science and technology involved some significant events.
A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black dot moving across the face of the Sun. The duration of such transits is usually several hours. A transit is similar to a solar eclipse by the Moon. While the diameter of Venus is more than three times that of the Moon, Venus appears smaller, and travels more slowly across the face of the Sun, because it is much farther away from Earth.
Johan Philip Lansberge was a Flemish Calvinist Minister, astronomer and Mathematician. His name is sometimes written Lansberg, and his first name is sometimes given as Philip or Johannes Philippus. He published under the Latin name Philippus Lansbergius.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance. The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times.
Jakob Bartsch or Jacobus Bartschius was a German astronomer.
Niccolò Zucchi was an Italian Jesuit, astronomer, and physicist.
Mysterium Cosmographicum is an astronomy book by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, published at Tübingen in late 1596 and in a second edition in 1621. Kepler proposed that the distance relationships between the six planets known at that time could be understood in terms of the five Platonic solids, enclosed within a sphere that represented the orbit of Saturn.
The Rudolphine Tables consist of a star catalogue and planetary tables published by Johannes Kepler in 1627, using observational data collected by Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). The tables are named in memory of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, in whose employ Brahe and Kepler had begun work on the tables. The main purpose of the Rudolphine tables was to allow the computation of the positions of the then known planets of the Solar System, and they were considerably more precise than earlier such tables.
Johann Baptist Cysat was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, after whom the lunar crater Cysatus is named. He was born in Lucerne, as the eighth of 14 children, to cartographer, historian and folklorist Renward Cysat (1545–1614).
Federico Angelo Cesi was an Italian scientist, naturalist, and founder of the Accademia dei Lincei. On his father's death in 1630, he became briefly lord of Acquasparta.
Jeremiah Horrocks, sometimes given as Jeremiah Horrox, was an English astronomer. He was the first person to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record. Most remarkably, Horrocks correctly asserted that Jupiter was accelerating in its orbit while Saturn was slowing and interpreted this as due to mutual gravitational interaction, thereby demonstrating that gravity's actions were not limited to the Earth, Sun, and Moon.
Francesco Stelluti was an Italian polymath who worked in the fields of mathematics, microscopy, literature, and astronomy. Along with Federico Cesi, Anastasio de Filiis and Johannes van Heeck, he founded the Accademia dei Lincei in August 1603.
The first known observations and recording of a transit of Venus were made in 1639 by the English astronomers Jeremiah Horrocks and his friend and correspondent William Crabtree. The pair made their observations independently on 4 December that year ; Horrocks from Carr House, then in the village of Much Hoole, Lancashire, and Crabtree from his home in Broughton, near Manchester.
Johann Ruderauf or Johannes Remus Quietanus was a German astronomer, astrologer and doctor. He maintained correspondence with Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Giovanni Faber, a pontifical botanist. He is one of the first four observers of transit of Mercury that happened on 7 November 1631.
Letters on Sunspots was a pamphlet written by Galileo Galilei in 1612 and published in Rome by the Accademia dei Lincei in 1613. In it, Galileo outlined his recent observation of dark spots on the face of the Sun. His claims were significant in undermining the traditional Aristotelian view that the Sun was both unflawed and unmoving. The Letters on Sunspots was a continuation of Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo's first work where he publicly declared that he believed that the Copernican system was correct.
References
- ↑ van Helden, Albert (1976). "The Importance of the Transit of Mercury of 1631". Journal for the History of Astronomy. 7: 1. Bibcode:1976JHA.....7....1V. doi:10.1177/002182867600700101. S2CID 22091697.
- ↑ Norman, Jeremy. "The First Book to Contain Images of Organisms Viewed through the Microscope (1630)". History of Knowledge. Retrieved 2014-12-02.
- ↑ Richardson, Matthew (2001). The Penguin Book of Firsts. New Delhi: Penguin Books India. ISBN 0-14-302771-9.
- ↑ L'Anthropologie (in French). Masson. 1894. p. 270.