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10 Charles Messier
Charles Messier was a French astronomer who was obsessed with discovering and
studying comets and their orbits. However, his search for the elusive comets ended up
leading him to create one of the most famous catalogues of deep sky objects. He
realized these deep sky objects could distract other comet-chasers, and so he decided to
distinguish them as immobile objects in the night sky. The resulting catalogue, published
in 1774 when the astronomer was 44 years old, contains over one hundred deep sky
objects, including nebulae and galaxies. Being among the most beautiful objects in the
night sky, you most likely have seen images of many of them taken by high aperture
telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope. Along with being among the first to
catalogue these wonderful objects, Messier was also successful in discovering thirteen
comets
9 Ptolemy
8 Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe, whose defining physical characteristic was no doubt his metallic nose (he
lost his real one in a duel), was a famed Danish astronomer. Up until his observations,
which occurred largely in the late 1500s, no other astronomer had tallied as many, or as
accurate of observations as Brahe. He catalogued hundreds of objects, and aspired to a
level of accuracy such that each star was catalogued within one arc-minute of its real
celestial location. To put that into perspective, hold your little finger at arms length it
is 1 degree in width. Now divide it into 60 parts; take one of those parts, and you have
an arc-minute. While he didnt always achieve this level of accuracy, the fact that he set
the standard so high with the technology available at that point in history is
commendable.
Brahe is probably best known for his work with new stars, or novae, which in his day
was cutting-edge astronomy. In 1572, he observed a bright star that appeared to be a
newcomer onto the celestial scene. While some argued that this was an atmospheric
phenomenon, Brahe showed through use of parallax that the object was much too far
away to be inside the Earths atmosphere. Although other supernova events had been
observed in the past, Brahe was the first to scientifically observe and acknowledge one.
This was a strong argument against the, then, predominant belief that the heavens were
fixed on colossal dome-like structures, the idea of which Brahe openly contradicted.
These two astronomers come in one package, because their main contribution to the
astronomical field was a mutual effort. This important contribution was the discovery of
the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation or CMB. Basically, the CMB was an
aftershock of the explosive birth of the Universe the Big Bang. This aftershock had
been theorized before its discovery by Penzias and Wilson in the 1960s, but its exact
value hadnt been pinpointed until the two scientists began experimenting with the
Holmdel Horn Antenna at Bell Labs. As they experimented, they realized they had an
ever-present background radiation in their data, and after cleaning their equipment of
pigeon droppings, they deduced that the radiation was not coming from anywhere on
Earth or even in the galaxy but outside the Milky Way It wasnt until later that the
two realized that their discovery had any significance, when it dawned on them that they
had discovered the elusive aftershock of the Big Bang. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson were
awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery.
The significance of the discovery lies in the fact that at that time there was still a good
deal of dispute over whether or not the Big Bang had even occurred. The main opposing
theory, known as the Steady State theory, was virtually abandoned by astronomers
following the momentous discovery. Some important outcomes of the discovery include
evidence for the inflationary model of the universe, the suggestion of a Dark Age of the
Universe, advancements in interferometry and countless other repercussions in the
astronomical field.
6 Nicolaus Copernicus
Copernicus was a European scientist born in 1473, and one of the most important of the
Renaissance. He is extremely significant because he is credited as the first astronomer
to put forward a comprehensive heliocentric version of the solar system. Although some
ancient astronomers had pondered a heliocentric theory, their works had either been
lost to the ages or largely ignored. However, in 1543 when his book, On the Revolutions
of the Celestial Spheres, was published, the theory could simply not be brushed aside
any longer. The idea that the Earth revolved around the sun
(and not vice versa) went directly against the teachings of the church, and this
publication was in a time when the church controlled most of society. Although
Copernicus died in the year of his great works publication, he still no doubt feared
persecution from religious authorities and realized that even after death his name and
the reputation of his work could be sullied. Interestingly enough, On the Revolutions of
the Celestial Spheres is actually dedicated to the Pope at the time, Pope Paul III, almost
definitely to avoid disfavor with the church. For his courageous introduction of the true
nature of the solar system to European scholars he is remembered as a monument to
the truth in a society largely unwilling to accept it.
5 William Herschel
4 Johannes Kepler
Kepler was a German astronomer and was the first to fully explain the motion of the
planets of our solar system. He described their motion with three laws, which he
published in 1609 AD. What allowed him to basically unlock the mystery was to imagine
the planets as having elliptical orbits rather than circular ones, which is how other
astronomers would view the solar system. In fact, his first law of planetary motion is the
simple statement that planets travel in ellipses. Like Copernicus, Kepler firmly believed
in a heliocentric solar system. However, the church was still very opposed to the idea
when he was alive. Despite this, Kepler championed the idea like no other astronomer
had and brought it to the forefront of the scientific revolution. Interestingly enough,
Kepler was himself a very religious man he had planned on becoming a priest before
ultimately deciding on pursuing science.
Kepler also happened to work quite closely with Tycho Brahe, although their relationship
is known to have been quite strained Brahe was most likely afraid of being shown-up
by his assistant. This is basically what happened when Kepler discovered the laws of
planetary motion. However, Kepler also made other important discoveries. He was the
first to explain how the moon influenced tides for example, and he also influenced
mathematics by forming some of the groundwork for integral calculus.
3 Edwin Hubble
Edwin Hubble, who did most of his major work in the first half of the twentieth century,
had perhaps the most momentous discovery of all of the astronomers on this list. Hubble
is credited with discovering galaxies outside of our own Milky Way. Although the race to
solve this mystery had contributions from many different scientists, it was Hubbles
observations through the Hooker telescope, around the year 1923, that proved to the
scientific community that there was more to outer space than the Milky Way. In
essence, with one finding, Hubble ballooned the Universe from a galaxy of about a
hundred thousand light years across, with approximately one hundred billion stars, to an
indefinite expanse of intergalactic space, billions of light years across, and with a
seemingly infinite amount of stars.
However, Hubble didnt stop there. He showed that these separate galaxies were moving
away from each other by observing there redshifts, an effect caused by light being
stretched out over vast distances. His observations led him to the discovery that the
farther away a galaxy was from the Milky Way, the faster it was moving away from us.
This is known as Hubbles Law. A cool side-note is that Einstein himself thanked Hubble
personally for making this discovery, because it verified some of the work that Einstein
had done years before that hadnt been fully accepted.
2 Hipparchus
1 Galileo Galilei
The most important astronomer of all time turns out to be the Italian spearhead of the
Scientific Revolution, Galileo. Galileo was, in a sense, a lucky astronomer. To put it
simply, he was fortunate to be alive when the telescope was invented (around 1607
AD). He caught wind of this amazing new device, and quickly made his own refracting
telescope. This gave him absolutely unprecedented access to information on the
heavens and he was the first to capitalize on it. While military leaders across Europe
were using the spyglasses to watch their enemies at sea, Galileo turned his telescope to
the sky and discovered secrets that had lay waiting for millennia.
Because Galileo lived and worked at such an opportune time, he is considered by most
to be the father of modern observational astronomy (not to mention the father of
modern physics). Many aspects of his life lend themselves to this title. He was the first
to lay eyes on the Rings of Saturn (though they looked more like handles from his
perspective), and he also discovered and named various moons of Jupiter. He was also
the first to observe sunspots, which was rather significant, because it was then believed
by the church that the sun was perfect and without blemishes of any kind.
Probably what Galileo is most well known for is his staunch defense of the idea of a
heliocentric solar system, regardless of the religious persecution he was subjected to.
Unlike Copernicus however, he was able to provide hard evidence for the fact. One of his
famous experiments included observing the planet Venus over a certain period, and
recording the various phases it would go through (with a telescope, one can see that
Venus goes through phases, not unlike our moon). Galileo used his data and made
certain calculations, and was able to show that due to Venuss phases, it had to orbit the
sun. Despite this and other pieces of amazing science however, the church still argued
that the sun orbited the Earth. Galileo was eventually placed under house arrest for his
heretical views, and lived out the last eight years of his life in his villa near Florence.