She became interested in the sky and the stars at an early age. William Mitchell, an amateur astronomer himself, opened the doors and introduced Maria to the endless realms of astronomy available to explore. He taught her to use the sextant and the reflecting telescope, to enable her to discover and venture for information by watching the stars. It was Maria’s early start in the field of astronomy that prepared her for the biggest discovery of her life. She and her father would go up to the roof every night.
He built his first telescope when he was only 20, using mirrors, lenses, and parts of an old Buick car. He used instructions from a 1925 issue of Popular Astronomy. Through the telescope he made observations of Jupiter and Mars. He sent his drawn renditions of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, hoping to get feedback from professional astronomers. Instead, they offered him a job.
William Herschel was the first to notice this odd object and was curious to find out more. This odd object, Uranus, was the first planet in recorded history to be discovered. The discovery of Uranus was just the beginning of William Herschel’s discoveries. He left his work with music and became
Step 1 Conduct research online. Use the Internet to find information on Aileen Wuornos. Step 2 Answer the following questions. Write answers to these questions: • What circumstances led up to her becoming a serial killer?
Herschel, an amateur astronomer, was not seeking to discover a new planet. Besides general curiosity, his motivations appear to be money, prestige, and power. He was looking for double stars as a way to measure stellar parallax. He had built his own 7ft reflector telescope which he moved to his house in Bath. There he discovered what would later be called Uranus.
While the goal of most astronomers was to chart the positions of planets and stars in the sky using mathematics, Herschel, however, was interested in the evolution of stars, and not their positions. When he discovered Uranus in 1781, he thought it was merely a comet. He contacted other astronomers about the new discovery. A month later astronomer Nevil Maskelyne suggested that
According to a peer-reviewed article, written by Kawaler, S. and Veverka, J. (1981) and published in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 75, Hershel’s observations of sunspots have led him to believe that they [i.e., the sunspots] “were holes in the outer luminous layers of the sun, through which we glimpse a dark, cold solid interior” (p. 50). This observational premise has led him to determine that “the sun viewed in this light appears to be nothing else
Nationalism was a large influence leading towards both World War I and World War II. People began to identify and be proud of their country. France, Britain, Italy, and Germany all experienced a sense of nationalism, which gave them strength, but also divided them. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. This turned into a larger conflict and ultimately started World War I.
he calculations, based on anomalies in the orbit of Uranus, were first carried out in 1843
The discovery of Mercury Mercury was first confirmed as discovered when Galileo Galilei turned his telescope on the planets and realized they matched predictions made by Copernicus. Unfortunately, his telescope wasn’t powerful enough to reveal a disk for Mercury, but it showed how
Looking up at the vast sky with the naked eye, one can see a beautiful display of stars, planets and the Moon. However, the Earth’s atmosphere distorts and blocks electromagnetic radiation, making it impossible for terrestrial telescopes to observe objects, in space, clearly. In his conclusion of The Realm of the Nebulae, Edwin Hubble describes the limitations of space exploration, “With increasing distance, our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly. Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.
Discovering Pulsars Pulsars were first discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell on the 15th of July, 1943. She discovered pulsars when viewing the print outs of her experiment of
In October 1923 Hubble spotted what he first believed was a nova star flaring up in the M31 nebula. After examining several photos of the area, he realized that it was a Cepheid star. Using Shapley’s method, Hubble placed M31 a million light-years away. Discovering this, Hubble realized that there are more galaxies other than ours. This discovery is often referred to as the discovery of the universe and cosmos.
Nicolaus Copernicus established the concept of a heliocentric system that validates that the sun, rather than the earth, is at the center of our solar system. Later on, he is now known as the “Father of Modern Astronomy”. Early Life On February 19, 1473 in Torun, Poland, Barbara Watzenrode and Nicolaus Copernicus Sr. had their fourth child, Nicolaus Copernicus (Armitage,
Abstract The purpose of carrying out this experiment was to investigate the phenomenon of Newtons’s Rings, to gain a better understanding of the theory Newton developed as well as to calculate the radius of curvature of a plano-convex lens and the thickness of a section of optical fibre. The effect is named after Isaac Newton who first studied it in 1717. The pattern observed appears as a series of concentric bright and dark fringes, which has its centre at the point of contact between two surfaces.
