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Astronomy and Space Timeline

The Renaissance Through The Industrial Age

By Nick Greene, About.com

This timeline is a work in progress.
  • 1609: Kepler publishes Brahe's calculation of the orbit of Mars. Kepler publishes his first two laws of planetary motion.
  • 1610: Galileo discovers Jupiter's 4 largest moons.
  • 1613: Galileo publishes work on sunspots.
  • 1619: Kepler publishes De cometis and Harmonice mundi, in which he announces his third law of planetary motion.
  • 1632: Galileo publishes Dialogo sopra I due massimi sistemi del mondo, supporting Copernicus' view that the planets circled the sun.
  • 1633: Inquisition forces Galileo to recant his belief in Copernican theory.
  • 1642: Galileo dies.
  • 1655: Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens develops a new method for grinding telescope lenses, making a more powerful telescope, and discovers the rings and one moon of Saturn.
  • 1656: Christiaan Huygens invents a pendulum clock and discovers that Saturn's "handles" are in fact rings.
  • 1659: Anglo-Irish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle develops an air pump for creating vacuums, confirms Galileo's view that bodies fall in a vacuum at the same rate, regardless of weight; discovers that sound does not travel in a vacuum.
  • 1660: Robert Hooke of London claims he invented and applied the hairspring to the balance wheel. However, the invention is widely credited to Christiaan Huygens and Abbé d'Hautefeuille who simultaneously developed the use of a hairspring with the balance wheel in 1674.
  • 1664: Isaac Newton experiments with gravity. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is observed by Robert Hooke.
  • 1666: Isaac Newton develops calculus (fluxions). Cassini discovers the polar ice caps on Mars.
  • 1668: Isaac Newton invents a reflecting telescope.
  • 1669: Isaac Newton in England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibrniz in Germany determine the principles of calculus at the same time. (The name is derived from the Latin word for pebble, referring to the use of pebble for counting.) Robert Hooke observes that the star Gamma Draconis has a parallax of 30 seconds of arc.
  • 1675: Leibniz determines integral and differential calculus. Christian Huygens patents the pocket watch. Foundation of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
  • 1678: Christiaan Huygens discovers the polarization of light.
  • 1680: First publication of "Old Moore's Almanack", which later becomes known as "Vox stellarum".
  • 1682: Edmond Halley discovers Halley's comet.
  • 1687: Isaac Newton describes the theory of gravity. The era of modern physics is inaugurated by the publication of his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, commonly called the Principia'. It was published in Latin and did not appear in English until 1729.
  • 1688: Newton constructs the first reflecting telescope.
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