Timeline
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c. 310 BCE - c. 230 BCELife of Greek astronomer and mathematician Aristarchus of Samos.
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c. 190 BCE - c. 120 BCELife of Hipparchus of Nicea, the ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer considered the greatest astronomer of antiquity and among the most impressive in world history
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c. 120 BCEChinese scientist Zhang Heng compiles a catalogue of 2500 stars and discusses the origin of eclipses.
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c. 100 CE - c. 170 CELife of the Alexandrian astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy.
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c. 150 CE - 1150 CEClaudius Ptolemy publishes Almagest, which becomes the primary book on astronomy.
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964 CEThe Almagest is updated by Persian atronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi giving many stars Arabic names still used today.
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11 Nov 1572 CETycho Brahe first observes the new star or supernova in the Cassiopeia constellation.
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1573 CETycho Brahe publishes his research on the 1572 supernova in his De Nova Stella (1573).
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1588 CEThe Danish astonomer Tycho Brahe publishes his Tychonic model of the comsos in his book Of More Recent Phenomena of the Ethereal World.
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1609 CEJohannes Kepler discovers that Mars has an eliptical orbit around the Sun.
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1658 CEChristiaan Huygens presents his disocvery of Saturn's rings and the moon of Titan.
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1676 CEDanish astronomer Ole Rømer proves that light has finite speed.
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1686 CEChrsitiaan Huygens builds an aerial telescope.
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1800 CEWilliam Herschel discovers infrared radiation.
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1842 CEColours of binary stars explained by Christian Doppler.