//file author: Chris Morino 10/28/02. //UW CSE143 student section JA //http://other.cerrocoso.edu/studenthelp/astronomy/timeline.htm //Astronomical Timeline, found from an online source through google. //This timeline is from 1252-2001 1252 King Alfonso X initiated a project to predict planetary positions called the Alfonsine Tables. 1340 William of Occam announces the Occam's Razor principle. 1460 Purbach proposes that the solar spheres were composed of transparent crystal. 1500 Leonardo da Vinci makes a sketch of a flying machine. 1512 Nicolaus Copernicus published Commentariolus. 1539 Martin Luther calls Nicolaus Copernicus a fool. 1540 Beginning of the Copernical Revolution. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published De Revolutionibus. 1550 Fracastoro developed a model of the solar system with 79 spheres. 1553 Michael Servetus burned at the stake. 1576 Tycho Brahe begins his catalog of planets and stars. 1596 Tycho Brahe completes his catalog of planets and stars. 1600 Giordano Bruno burned at the stake. 1609 Galileo Galilei begins astronomical observations with the refracting telescope he invented. 1609 Johannes Kepler publishes New Astronomy. 1610 Galileo Galilei discovers four of Jupiter's moons. 1613 Galileo Galilei discovered sunspots. 1616 Catholic church bans reading of De Revolutionibus. 1619 Johannes Kepler publishes The Harmony of the Worlds. 1632 Galileo Galilei publishes Dialogue of the Two Chief World Systems. 1633 Galileo Galilei tried by the Inquisition, recants, and was sentenced to prison. 1644 Rene Descartes proposes the first of the evolutionary theories of the formation of the solar system. 1647 Johannes Hevelius makes the first mostly accurate map of the Moon. 1650 Jean Riccioli discovered that the star Mizar is a binary. 1651 Riccioli begins naming lunar craters after famous philosophers and scientists. 1655 Christian Huygens discovered Saturn's rings. 1656 Cyrano de Bergerac publishes Empires of the Moon. 1668 Isaac Newton builds the first reflecting telescope. 1680 Isaac Newton explains the relationship between mass, gravity, and acceleration. 1687 Isaac Newton published Principia. 1690 End of the Copernical Revolution. 1704 Edmund Halley postulated that comets travel in elliptical orbits within the solar system predicted the next appearance of Halley's Comet. 1705 Daniel Defoe publishes Journey to the World in the Moon. 1745 Georges Buffon proposes the first of the catastrophic theories of the formation of the solar system. 1767 John Michell postulated the existence of physical binary stars. 1772 Johann Bode announces Bode's Law. 1781 Charles Messier catalogs nebulae, starting the Messier numbering, or M numbering, system. 1781 Uranus discovered. 1781 William Herschel discovered Uranus. 1784 John Mitchell postulated the existence of black holes. 1785 William Herschel discovered the direction of our Sun toward the solar apex. 1798 Pierre Laplace postulated that black holes are so dense that escape velocity is faster than the speed of light. 1801 Ceres discovered. 1804 William Herschel proved the existence of physical binary stars with the discovery of a second star orbiting Castor. 1817 Joseph Fraunhofer discovers absorption lines in the Sun's spectrum. 1838 Friedrich Bessel published the parallax and distance of 61 Cygni. 1838 Stellar parallaxes discovered. 1844 Freidrich Bessel discovered the fact of a white dwarf orbiting Sirius. 1846 Neptune discovered. 1846 Neptune discovered. 1849 First photographs of the Moon are taken. 1850 Edward Roche calculates Roche's limit. 1859 James Clerk Maxwell discovered that Saturn's rings are not solid. 1862 Alvan Clark is the first astronomer to view a white dwarf. 1864 William Hugins discovered emission lines in the spectra of some nebulae that matched no known elements. 1866 Giovanni Schiaparelli discovered that the comet 1862 III was causing the Perseid meteor showers. 1868 Pierre Janssen and Norman Lockyer independently discover Helium in the Sun's spectrum. 1869 Father Angelo Secchi produces the first maps of the Martian canals. 1872 Henry Draper takes the first photographs of stellar spectra. 1877 Asaph Hall discovers the first of the Martian moons. 1877 Giovanni Schiaparelli revises the map of the Martian canals. 1880 Stefan-Boltzman law discovered. 1889 Mizar A is found to be a spectroscopic binary star. 1895 James Keeler discovered that Saturn's rings rotate at different speeds. 1895 Percival Lowell describes the canals of Mars in his book "Mars". 1896 Antoine Becquerel discovers radioactivity. 1898 Wilhelm Wien discovers Wien's Law. 1902 James Jeans calculated the point at which gravitational collapse would begin based on cloud temperature and mass. 1904 Johannes Hartmann discovered interstellar gas. 1905 Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell begin development of H-R diagrams. 1908 Mizar B is found to be a spectroscopic binary star. 1916 Karl Schwarzschild solved Einstein's theory of general relativity and discovers the Schwarzschild radius. 1918 Howard Shapley discovered the center of the Milky Way galaxy. 1920 Megh Nad Saha discovered the Saha equation. 1923 Edwin Hubble identified and measured the periods of the Cepheid variables. 1924 Andromeda galaxy discovered where astronomers previously believed a nebula existed. 1926 Henry Norris Russell and H. Vogt independently postulate the Russell-Vogt theorem. 1928 Paul Dirac solved the equations that describe the quantum behavior of electrons leading to a theory of the existence of antimatter. 1929 Georges Lemaitre theorizes that the universe was once the size of an atomic nucleus and suddenly expanded ("big bang" theory). 1929 Robert Goddard launches atmospheric research rocket. 1930 Bernard Lyot invented the chronograph. 1930 Chandrasekhar limit discovered by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. 1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. 1932 Karl Jansky built the first radio telescope. 1933 Arthur Eddington published "Expanding Universe". 1936 Grote Reber began mapping the Milky Way galaxy with a radio telescope. 1938 Orson Wells broadcasts "War of the Worlds" October 30. 1939 Bengt Stromgren discovered a method of calculating the radius of ionized regions surrounding stars. 1948 Palomar Observatory completed. 1950 Fred Whipple postulates the dirty iceberg model of comet nuclei. 1950 Jan Oort begins mapping comet source regions. 1959 Lick Observatory completed. 1959 Soviet Union lands the first probe on the Moon. 1962 Venus' retrograde rotation discovered. 1963 Maarten Schmidt discovered quasar 3C 273. 1967 Jocelyn Bell discovered the first pulsar. 1968 Thomas Gold demonstrated that charged particles inside the magnetic fields of neutron stars would produce radio radiation. 1968 United States astronauts make the first orbit of the Moon - Apollo 8 on December 24. 1969 First landing on the Moon - Apollo 11 on July 20. 1970 Astronomers discover that Saturn's rings are composed of ice. 1970 Copernicus space telescope launched. 1970 The Soviet spacecraft Mars 3 is the first craft to land on Mars. 1970 The Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 lands on Venus, the first craft to land on another planet. 1975 Astronomers discover a large amount of ethyl alcohol near the center of the Milky Way galaxy. 1975 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory completed. 1975 Giant impact hypothesis presented as the cause of the creation of the Moon. 1980 The first multiple mirror telescope is built at Mt. Hopkins, Arizona. 1981 Alan Guth postulates the inflationary universe model of the big bang theory. 1981 First American space shuttle flight. 1982 European X-ray Orbiting Satellite launched. 1983 Astronomers announce that the Small Magellanic Cloud may be two galaxies. 1983 The Infrared Astronomical Satellite is launched. 1983 Vector bosons detected. 1986 Soviet Union launches first part of the Mir space station. 1986 Space shuttle Challenger explodes on takeoff. 1987 La Palma Observatory completed. 1987 Soviet Union launches their first space shuttle. 1987 The explosion of Supernova 1987A, that occurred in 168,000 B. C. was seen on Earth, February 23. 1989 Cosmic Background Explorer is launched. 1989 Hipparcus space telescope launched. 1991 Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer launched. 1991 Gamma Ray Observatory is launched. 1991 Mauna Kea Keck Observatory completed. 1992 Astronomers discover microwave background fluctuations. 1993 ASTRO-D launched. 1997 The Mars Pathfinder successfully lands on Mars and launches the Sojourner Rover on the surface. 1998 Japan launched the Nozomi spacecraft on a mission to orbit Mars. 1998 Lunar Prospector launched. 1998 United States launched Deep Space 1. 2001 Spacecraft NEAR Shoemaker safely lands on the asteroid 433 Eros, February 15. 2001 United States launched the Genesis mission to study solar wind particles.