Astronomers and Discoveries Flashcards
Who put forward the Heliocentric Theory?
Copernicus.
What did Tycho observe?
A supernova in Cassiopeia
What did Galileo discover?
The moons of Jupiter
The Moon’s uneven surface of craters and mountains
The phases of Venus
Sunspots
What did Kepler discover?
Planets move in elliptical orbits around the Sun.
Planets move faster the nearer they are to the Sun.
There is a relationship between the distance of a planet and the time it takes to orbit the Sun.
What did Giuseppe Piazzi discover, and how?
He spotted Ceres in the sky, thinking it was a comet. However, it was later confirmed to be orbiting between Mars and Jupiter and was considered a ‘minor planet’. Later, more asteroids were discovered.
Who discovered Uranus?
Herschel.
What was strange about the discovery of Neptune?
Four people discovered it. Calculations had been made that said Uranus’s orbit was being changed by a large body, by John Couch Adams and Urban le Verrier.
What method was used to discover Pluto, and who did it?
Photography by Clive Tombaugh.
