Timeline of important astronamical discoveries and events.

  -5000 to -4001 Egyptian calendar, regulated by the Sun and the Moon.

-2500 to -2001 Chinese lunar calendar

-1500 to -1001 Obelisks in Egypt possibly used as sundials

-1900 Stonehenge built. Possibly a calendar to chart the movement of the sun, moon and the planets.

-250 to -201 Eratosthenes suggests that the Earth moves around the Sun

517 Hindu Aryabhata complies his manual of astronomy

813 School of astronomy at Baghdad started

1050 Important astronomical instruments arrive in Europe from the Eastern countries

1054 A minor star in the constellation Taurus explodes in a supernova visible for the following 656 nights.

1066 The Halley Comet is first recorded in the European sky

1080 Toledan table of stars

1091 Walcher of Malverin notes the eclipse of the Moon in Italy

1512 Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) states that the Earth and the other planets rotate around the Sun

1537 Niccolo Tartaglia discusses the motion of heavenly bodies in the book Nova Scientia

1572 Tycho Brahe destroys the idea that no changes can occur within the sky by discovering a new star

1602 "Theriques of the Planets" by Thomas Blondeville

1608 Galileo Galilei (1564-1842) constructs astronomical telescope

1613 Galileo Galilei discovers sunspots

1616 Wllebrord Snellius discovers the law of refraction

1639 Jeremiah Horrocs observes the transit of Venus which he had predicted

1647 Johann Hevel writes a book about the lunar surface

1666 Isaac Newton measures the orbit of the moon

1675 Olaus Romer discovers the finite velocity of light

1728 James Bradley discovers the aberration of light from fixed stars

1739 John Winthrop publishes his " Notes on sunspots"

1750 Johann Tobias Mayer: "Map of the Moon"

1761 Mikhail V. Lomonosov discovers atmosphere on Venus

1781 William Herschel discovers Uranus

1788 Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace: "Laws of the Planetary System"

1797 H. W. M. Olberts publishes his method for calculating orbits of comets

1800 William Herschel discovers infrared solar rays

1868 Joseph Normann Cockyer discovers helium in the spectrum of the Suns atmosphere

1877 Giovanni V. Schiaparelli observes Marsı canals

1905 Albert Einstein publishes his theory of relativity

1912 Victor F. Hess discovers cosmic radiation

1917 100-inch reflecting telescope installed at Mount Wilson, California

1918 Harlow Shapely discovers the true dimensions of the Milky Way galaxy

1925 Solar eclipse in New York is first in 300 years

1929 Edward Hubble measures large red shifts in the spectra of extragalactic nebulae

1930 Pluto discovered. First planetarium in the western hemisphere built.

1932 Karl Jansky establishes a foundation for radio astronomy

1937 Grote Reber builds the worldıs first radio telescope.

1938 Grote Reber receives short waves from the Milky Way

1945 Lajos Janossy explores cosmic radiation

1946 Edward V. Appleton discovers that the sunspots emit radiation

1948 200-inch reflecting telescope erected

1953 Cosmic ray observatory erected on Mount Wrangel, Alaska

1971 American astronomers discover two "new" galaxies adjacent to the Milky Way

1977 Discovery of a mini-planet orbiting the sun between Saturn and Uranus

1978 Discovery of a moon orbiting Pluto

1979 Discovery of rings around Jupiter

1980 Six more moons around Saturn discovered

1981 NASA scientists announce that two unusual meteorites found in the Antarctic may have originated on Mars

1981 The discovery of the most massive star known, R136a. It is 2500 times larger than the sun, but is only 10 times brighter

1984 NASA photographs a planetary system around the star Beta Pictoris

1985 University of California, Berkeley gains more evidence of a black hole in the center of our galaxy

1986 Voyager 2 flies by Uranus discovering ten new moons

1987 The nearest supernova detected since 1604 is observed in the Large Magellanic galaxy

1987 Alexander Arkhipov identifies 9 of 4500 "sun-like" stars

1988 Australia unveils the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere

1988 Pluto is confirmed to have an atmosphere

2000 This timeline is written


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