Year

Month

Date

Discovery w/in oort cloud

Discovery w/in galaxy, star evolution

Discovery byd galaxy

-800

Earliest observations of sunspots by Chinese “Book of changes”

-750

18.6 year of cycle in rising and setting of moon by MAYAN astronomers.

-585

May

Prediction of Solar Eclipse – Eclipse of Thales

-467

Anaxagoras gave correct explanation for eclipses. First to explain that moon shines due to reflected light from sun

-400

Babylonians used zodiac to divide heavens into 12 equal segments each of 30 degrees. 

-387

Plato – He promoted idea that everything in Universe moves in harmony  and that the Sun, Moon, snd planets mover arounf Earth in perfect circles.

-270

Aristarchus of Samos – heliocentric model (sun at its centre and earth as just one planet orbiting it)

-240

Eratosthenes measured circumference of Earth

-164

September

22

Observation of Halley’s Comet, recorded in cuneiform on a clay tablet between, Babylon, Iraq. British Museum (BM 41462)

-130

Hipparchus gave first accurate star map. And gave catalogue with 850 of the brightest stars.

Year

Month

Date

Invention

Phenomenon / disasters

-763

June

15

Assyrians record a solar eclipse that is later used to fix the chronology  of Mesopotamian history.

-240

Earliest record sighting of Halley’s Comet by Chinese astronomers. 

-130

Hipparchus came up with astrolabe

Year

Month

Date

Discovery w/in oort cloud

Discovery w/in galaxy, star evolution

Discovery byd galaxy

140

Ptolemy – gave 48 constellations. And suggested geocentric earth

400

Hindu cosmological time: “Surya Siddhanta” – average length of sideral year 365.2563627 days, which is only 1.4 seconds longer than modern value 365.256363004 days.

499

Aryabhatta – first identified the force gravity to explain  why objects do not fall when earth rotates. Geocentric model. Elliptical model. Planets and the moon reflects light of Sun. they do not have their own light

628

Bhramagupta- first recognises gravity as a force of attraction. Gave method for calculations of the motions, planets rising and setting, and calcultaions of solar eclipse and lunar eclipse.

Year

Month

Date

Phenomenon / disasters

760

May

22

Fourteenth recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.

837

April

10

 Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU.

Year

Month

Date

Discovery w/in oort cloud

Discovery w/in galaxy, star evolution

Discovery byd galaxy

1054

July

4

SUPERNOVA SN 1054, is seen by Chinese Song dynasty, Arab, and possibly Amerindian observers near the star Zeta Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula.

1543

May

24

Coprnicus published his book for heliocentrism and other

1572

Tycho Brahe – supernova in constellation Cassiopeia

1582

1603

Johann Bayer: Bayer designation to stars,i.e greek letters.

1609

Kepler’s first and second laws of planetary motions are announced

1616

March

5

 Nicolaus Copernicus’s book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published

1619

Kepler’s third law in his book ”Harmonice Mundi”

1655

March

25

Christian Huygens: Saturn rings + Titan + fourth satellite of Saturn. 

1659

Christian Huygens: first to observe surface feature on other planet. Saw a volcanic plain. Estimated length of day on Mars to be 24 1/2 hrs

1667

Geminiano Montanari: first variable star’s discovery – Algol

1675

Ole Romer: measured speed of light, Cassini: discovers Saturn’s rings are split into two parts

1687

July

5

Start of Modern astronomy: Newton publishes his theory of universal gravitation.

1781

March

13

Discovery of Uranus by Williams Herchel, 13th March

1783

January

31

William Herschel discovered white dwarf, 40 Eridani

1784

Messier discovers galaxies, nebula and star clusters. Named them messier object. He gave 103 objects. Other astronomer added 7 objects

1787

January

11

 William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, natural satellites of Uranus.

Year

Month

Date

Observatory/telescope

Explorations

1608

Hans Lippershey: invents telescope. 3 times magnification

1609

1610

January

7

Galileo uses telecope,discovers 4 Jovian moons, ring of Saturn, sun spots, Moon craters and milky way galaxy. 20 times magnification

1668

first reflecting telescope – Newton

1687

July

5

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) launches the Tiangong-2 space laboratory from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia.

Year

Month

Date

Invention

Phenomenon / disasters

Rocket Evolution

1054

July

4

Chinese astronomers saw sudden appearance of bright star. American rock carvings also saw a brilliant star close to moon which is actually crab supernova exploding

1185

May

1

Solar Promeniences evidence during solar eclipse

1473

February

19

1504

February

29

 Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Jamaican natives to provide him with supplies.

1582

Pope Gregory – Gregorian calendar

1604

October

8

The recenttly observed supernova – SN 1604 or Kepler’s Supernova

1608

Hans Lippershey: invents telescope

1616

February

26

 Galileo Galilei is formally banned by the Roman Catholic Church from teaching or defending the view that the earth orbits the sun.

1655

March

25

1676

November

21

The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

1705

Halley correctly predicts the return of comet Halley’s comet i.e. 1758

1735

July

11

According to Mathematical calculations Pluto moved inside the orbit of Neptune for the last time before 1979.

1753

February

17

1753

March

1

1758

Halley comet observed

1770

July

1

 Lexell’s Comet is seen closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 AU

Year

Month

Date

Misc

1473

February

19

Birth of Nicolaus Copernicus

1753

February

17

In Sweden February 17 is followed by March 1 as the country moves from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

1753

March

1

Sweden introduces its own Swedish calendar, in an attempt to gradually merge into the Gregorian calendar, reverts to the Julian calendar on this date in 1712, and introduces the Gregorian calendar on this date in 1753.

Year

Month

Date

Discovery w/in oort cloud

Discovery w/in galaxy, star evolution

Discovery byd galaxy

1801

January

1

Giuseppe Piazzi discovers first asteroid – CERES(945 km dia)

1801

July

11

French astronomer Jean-Louis Pons makes his first comet discovery. In the next 27 years he discovers another 36 comets, more than any other person in history.

1802

March

28

 Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid ever to be discovered.

1804

September

1

Juno, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt, is discovered by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.

1819

July

1

Johann Georg Tralles discovers the Great Comet of 1819, (C/1819 N1). It was the first comet analyzed using polarimetry, by François Arago.

1826

April

29

The galaxy Centaurus A or NGC 5128 was discovered by James Dunlop. It is fth brightest object in night sky a great target for amteur astronomers

1830

Jupiter’s gret red spot was seen

1838

61 cygni first ever star after sun, whose distance was calculated. Using parallax (0.314” or 10.3 ly). By Freidrich Bessel

1843

Samuel Heinrich Schwabe: describes the sunspot cycle

1845

Lord Rosse discovers a nebula of spiral shape using this 72 inch telescope, which actually later got to be knoen as Whirlpool galaxy

1846

September

23

Johann Galle discovers neptune. Its largest moon Triton was found at the same time.

1846

October

10

 Triton, the largest natural satellite of the Neptune discovered by  William Lassell.

1848

Rudolf Wolf: Wolf’s formula for sunspot counts.

1850

July

17

Vega became first star to be photographed after sun. By William Bond and John Adams Whipple with a duguerreotype

1858

September

10

George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.

1861

May

13

The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt 

1863

1868

August

18

Helium found in spectrum of Sun’s chromosphere. A bright yellow line of 587.49 nm. Detected by Jules Janssen during a total solar eclipse. 30 years later helium was found on Earth

1877

Asaph Hall – Phobos and Deimos. Moons of Mars

1892

September

9

Amalthea, third closest and fifth found moon of Jupiter is discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard.

1892

October

13

Edward Emerson Barnard discovers first comet (206P/Barnard–Boattini) discovered by photographic means.

1894

August

Subhash chandra bose – discovering mm length electromagentic waves

1898

August

13

1898 – Carl Gustav Witt discovers 433 Eros, the first near-Earth asteroid to be found

Year

Month

Date

Observatory/telescope

1845

Leviathon of Parsonstown – 72inch – reflecting telescope. Largest telescope from 1845 to 1917. By william parsons

Year

Month

Date

Invention

Phenomenon / disasters

Rocket Evolution

1819

March

15

French physicist Augustin Fresnel is adjudged the winner of the Grand Prix of the Académie des Sciences for his “Memoir on the Diffraction of Light”, which verifies the Fresnel integrals, accounts for the limited extent to which light spreads into shadows, and thereby demolishes Newton’s initial objection to the wave theory of light.

1836

May

15

Francis Baily observes “Baily’s beads” during an annular eclipse.

1863

Spectral analysis of stars: by William Huggins

1892

July

4

 Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, causing Monday (July 4) to occur twice, resulting in a year with 367 days.

1895

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky – many works – design of rockets with steering thursters, multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into vaccum of space

Year

Month

Date

Discovery w/in oort cloud

Discovery w/in galaxy, star evolution

Discovery byd galaxy

1908

Leavitt discovers Cepheid variables after he studied Magllanic clouds.

1910

September

15

Thedor Wulf published first evidence of cosmic radiation

1910

Hertzsprung and Russel introduce: HR diagram

1912

January

6

German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of “continental drift”.

1918

Henry Draper Catalogue was published

1922

Jacobus kapeyn suggested existence of dark matter by studying stellar velocities.

1923

Hubble resolved Shapley and curtis debate by finding Sepheids in Andromeda Galaxy proving that there are definetely other galaxies beyond milky way

1924

November

23

Hubble shows that galaxies exist outside milky way. Andromeda

1924

Oort shows that centre of milky way galaxy is in Sagittarius

1926

1927

Georges Lemaitre first to identify theory of expanding universe, first to give hubble’s law. Proposed hypothesis of primeval atom today called as big bang

1929

Hubble’s constant and that universe is expanding

1930

February

18

Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto

1930

May

1

“Pluto” is officially proposed for the name of the newly discovered  by Vesto Slipher in the Lowell Observatory

1930

Chandrashekhar at age of 19 gave chandrashekhar limit for which he was awarded nobel prize

1931

March

16

 3754 Kathleen is discovered at the Lowell Observatory by Clyde Tombaugh, who is mostly remembered for his discovery of Pluto.

1931

Karl Jansky dicovers cosmic radio waves. His set up was named as Jansky’s merry go round

1932

Oort postulated idea of dark matter existence

1933

Fritz Zwicky and Walter Baade propose the idea of neutron star

1946

George Gemaw came up with Big Bang nucleosythhesis

1948

Fred Hoyle came up with steady state theory. Alpherd and Herman predcited thhat the universe should now be filled with blackbody radiation at a temperature of 5 Kelvin

1955

March

22

 Haumea was discovered in the kuiper belt.

1964

May

20

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson using Dicke radiometer, they measured CMBS’s temperature to be 4.2 K

1964

Cygnus X1 – first black hole detection through a sounding rocket and x ray emissions

1967

February

8

Josephe Weber, the first to attempt to detect gravitational waves. He said he deteccted 311 such events in 7 months. The aluminium bars are called as Weber bars whose 10^-16 m of detection has to be done by piezoelectric sensors to detect gravitational wa

1967

November

28

Little green men, first pulsar detection. By Jocelyn Bell Burner. In constellation Valpecula

1977

March

10

Astronomers discover the rings of Uranus

1979

February

7

 Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either was discovered.

1979

March

5

Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the German-American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by “off the scale” gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

1987

February

24

 Supernova 1987a is seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Closest observed supernova since kepler’s supernova. A core collapse supernova

1989

March

31

4581 Asclepius, near-EARTH and potentially hazardour asteroid was found by H.E. Hault and N. G. Thomas.

1989

Great Wall (Coma Wall) one of the  largest known supercluster in universe by Margaret Geller

1992

January

9

The first confirmed discovery of extrasolar planets was made in 1992 when a system of terrestrial-mass planets was announced to be present around the millisecond pulsar PSR B1257+12 by  Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.

1993

March

28

Francisco Garcia Diaz discovered a type II supernova in M81 (NGC 3031).

1993

August

28

 NASA’s Galileo probe performs a flyby of the asteroid 243 Ida. Astronomers later discover a moon, the first known asteroid moon, in pictures from the flyby and name it Dactyl.

1995

October

6

51 Pegasi B, first exoplanet orbiting main sequnece star. 2019 Nobel Prize in phy: Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz

1998

March

2

Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.

1998

Discovery of accelerating universe using distant type Ia supernova, reason later found was baryonic acoustic oscillations