5 ms·

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I'm an astronomer who has been interested in these kinds of questions for a long time and earlier this year started a pod

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I'm an astronomer who has been interested in these kinds of questions for a long time and earlier this year started a podcast to delve into answering them. It's a history of astronomy starting with the Babylonians and working towards modern astronomy (though at one episode a month it will take a while to get all the way through). My intention has been to take the astronomy of each era on its own terms and try to understand what questions they were trying to answer and what techniques they used to answer them. You tend to read things like "the Ptolemaic system was geocentric and had to use lots of epicycles to work and then 1500 years later Copernicus introduced a heliocentric system that didn't need epicycles." but I'm trying to explain how these systems developed, why epicycles seemed to be natural, how they figured out what epicycles were needed based on the observations they had made, etc. The website is here if you're interested: www.songofurania.com

mymythisisthis 5y ago
This was a good read https://archive.org/details/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft https://archive.org/details/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft History of the planetary systems from Thales to Kepler by Dreyer
- antognini 5y ago
  Yes, I have that book! It's excellent and one of the ones I use as a source. A few others that I've found to be really good: * A History of Astronomy by Pannekoek * Aristarchus of Samos by Heath (this is actually a much broader history of Greek astronomy than its title suggests) * Episodes in the Early History of Astronomy by Aaboe * Exploring Ancient Skies by Kelly & Milone (much more technical, but also broader and more up to date than the other books)
  - mymythisisthis 5y ago
    Hi, maybe you can give me some advice about what to read. I'm looking for a book/video that would give me a step by step account of how early astronomers worked. How they actually took a reading, what corrections they made, and specifically how they did all their calculations. I found this video on celestial navigation really great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5R5mrrGB0&t=611s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5R5mrrGB0&t=611s it walks a person step by step through navigation. Looking for something like this, but showing how a star catalogue, like the Rudolphine Table, is compiled.

mymythisisthis 5y ago

This was a good read https://archive.org/details/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft https://archive.org/details/historyofplaneta00dreyuoft History of the planetary systems from Thales to Kepler by Dreyer

antognini 5y ago
Yes, I have that book! It's excellent and one of the ones I use as a source. A few others that I've found to be really good: * A History of Astronomy by Pannekoek * Aristarchus of Samos by Heath (this is actually a much broader history of Greek astronomy than its title suggests) * Episodes in the Early History of Astronomy by Aaboe * Exploring Ancient Skies by Kelly & Milone (much more technical, but also broader and more up to date than the other books)
- mymythisisthis 5y ago
  Hi, maybe you can give me some advice about what to read. I'm looking for a book/video that would give me a step by step account of how early astronomers worked. How they actually took a reading, what corrections they made, and specifically how they did all their calculations. I found this video on celestial navigation really great https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5R5mrrGB0&t=611s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu5R5mrrGB0&t=611s it walks a person step by step through navigation. Looking for something like this, but showing how a star catalogue, like the Rudolphine Table, is compiled.