Astronomer
An astronomer or astrophysicist is a scientist whose area of research is astronomy or astrophysics.
Unlike most scientists, astronomers cannot directly interact with the celestial bodies, and so instead must resort to detailed observation in order to make discoveries. Generally, astronomers use telescopes or other imaging equipment to make such observations.
Famous Astronomers
| Astronomer | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Hipparchus and Ptolemy | Determined the positions of about 1,000 bright stars, tried to explain the puzzles of astronomy without refuting the commonly believed geocentric model of universe and classified stars by magnitude. |
| Aristarchus | First known person to propound the heliocentric model of universe |
| Nicolaus Copernicus | Reitererated the heliocentric model of universe. |
| Galileo Galilei | Was the first to use the telescope to observe the sky. Condemned to house arrest for his discoveries by Inquisitional edict... which was lifted 359 years later by Pope John Paul II. |
| Johannes Kepler | Suggested the elliptical orbits of planets, and propounded his Laws of Planetary Motion. |
| Isaac Newton | Published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), containing the "Newton's laws of motion", which are fundamental to mechanical physics, and which explained Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Predicted the orbits of the solar planets. |
| Henrietta Swan Leavitt | Catalogued Cepheid variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds, in 1912 discovered the relationship between luminosty and periodicity in Cepheids -- leading to Hertzprung's later work. |
| Ejnar Hertzsprung | determined the distance to several Cepheids, when Cepheids were detected in other galaxies such as the Andromeda galaxy, the distance to those galaxies could then be determined. |
| Edwin Hubble | Discovered the expansion of the universe. (Hubble's Law) The Hubble Orbiting Space Telescope was named in his honor. |
See also
There is also a well-known painting by Johannes Vermeer titled The Astronomer, which is often linked to Vermeer's The Geographer. These paintings are both thought to represent the growing influence and rise in prominence of scientific enquiry in Europe at the time of their painting, 1668-69.
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