Full Name:_________________________________

ASTR 135

Quiz on Renaissance Astronomers

2-2-05

 

 


d___ 1. Posthumously provided Kepler with planetary position data that eventually led to Keplers’s 3 laws of planetary motion.

 

c___ 2. Invented calculus and a law of universal gravitation, both of which are still in use today.

 

b___ 3. Was a Polish cleric that published a heliocentric theory in a book called de Revolutionibus, the first time such a theory was widely distributed.

 

e___ 4. Used a telescope to make many discoveries, such as moons around Jupiter, phases of Venus, and mountains on the moon.

 

a___ 5. Figured out that the true shape of a planetary orbit was not a circle, or a sum of circles, but in fact was an ellipse.

 

c___ 6. Many years after Kepler, was able to use basic laws of physics to derive all of Kepler’s laws mathematically.

 

d___ 7. Became famous because of his work that showed that the 1572 supernova was very distant from Earth, and was granted an observatory, servants, and an entire island by the king of Denmark. Died of a bladder infection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answers (enter correct letter into blanks at left)

 

a.       Johannes Kepler

b.      Nicolas Copernicus

c.       Isaac Newton

d.      Tycho Brahe

e.       Galileo Galilei