| A | B |
|---|
| astronomy | a division of the science of physics |
| astrology | pseudoscience which states that the stars and planets govern a person's life |
| planets | heavenly bodies which shine by reflected light |
| Stonehenge | stone circle located on the Salisbury Plain |
| megaliths | large stones used by ancients to build circle structures |
| medicine wheel | large stone circle built by Native Americans |
| Mayan | early American culture which lived on the Yucatan peninsula |
| Tiakal | Mayan city aligned with Venus |
| Dresden Codex | Mayan stone book of astronomical records |
| Ra | Egyptian sun god |
| Karnak | location of temple of Amen-Ra |
| Thales | Earth is a flat disk floating on water |
| Alexander of Macedon | Established school and library on the African coast |
| Aristotle | Theories used for 2000 years |
| Anaximander | viewed earth as a cylinder floating in free space |
| Anaximenes | Viewed earth as a disk supported by air |
| Anaxagoras | pictured the moon and planets as earthlike, shining by reflected light |
| Pythagoras | said earth was round after watchin ships "sink" over the horizon |
| Philolaus | suggested that a central fire provided the light for all stars |
| Democritus | recognized the fuzzy band of light in the sky as stars of the Milky Way |
| Plato | student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle |
| Heraclides | suggested the apparent daily motion of objects in sky due to earth's rotation |
| Aristarchus | proposed a sun-centered universe...before his time |
| Hipparchus | Father of Positional Astronomy |
| magnitude | brightness of stars |
| first magnitude | brightest stars in the sky to naked eye |
| magnitude six | dimmest stars to naked eye |
| retrograde motion | backwards loop in orbit |
| Ptolemy | last great astronomer of Alexandrian school |
| epicycle | corkscrew path around a circular orbit |
| deferent | "circular" planetary orbit |
| Almagest | 13 volume Ptolemaic encyclopedia |
| Vandals/Visigoths | barbarians who conquered Rome |
| Arabs | conquered Alexandria in 642 |
| St. Thomas Aquinas | elevated Aristotelian model to level of religious dogma |
| geocentric | earth centered |
| heliocentric | sun centered |
| Bruno | last man to be burned at stake by Inquisition |
| Toledo | seat of Spanish observatory |
| Inquisition | church court which tried people for heresy |
| Eratosthenes | accurately calculated the circumference of the earth |
| Tycho Brahe | Danish astronomer who kept very accurate records |
| Copernicus | first to publish heliocentric model of universe |
| Galileo | Discovered 4 moons of Jupiter |
| Kepler | three laws of planetary motion |
| Newton | developed laws of gravity |
| Hveen | Brahe's island |
| Uraniborg | Brahe's observatory |
| mural sextant | instrument used by Brahe |
| Druids | pagan religion often associated with Stonehenge |
| Aubrey holes | 56 hole around the edge of Stonehenge thought to predict lular eclipses |
| summer solstice | rising sun is seen over the heel stone of Stonehenge |
| stone age | type of tools use to build Stonehenge |
| Sarsens | circle of large capped stone at Stonehenge |
| lintels | crossbar stone at Stonehenge |
| triloliths | large inner horseshoe of arched stones at Stonehenge |
| Polynesians | adept star navigators of the Pacific |
| pharoahs | "descendants" of the sun god |
| Akhenaton | pharoah who believed in one god |
| Zoroaster | Persian prophet associated with astrology |
