Histori e shkurtër e astronomise

Ne pjesen e hershme te historise se saj, astronomia merrej vetem me
vezhgimin dhe parathenien e levizjeve te trupave qiellore qe mund te
shiheshin me sy.
In the early part of its history, astronomy involved only the
observation and predictions of the motions of the objects in the sky
that could be seen with the naked eye. The Rigveda refers to the 27 constellations associated with the motions of the sun and also the 12 zodiacal divisions of the sky. The ancient Greeks made important contributions to astronomy, among them the definition of the magnitude system. The Bible
contains a number of statements on the position of the earth in the
universe and the nature of the stars and planets, most of which are
poetic rather than literal; see Biblical cosmology. In 500 AD, Aryabhata
presented a mathematical system that took the earth to spin on its axis
and considered the motions of the planets with respect to the sun.
The study of astronomy almost stopped during the middle ages, except for the work of Arabic astronomers. The late 9th century Islamic astronomer al-Farghani
(Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani) wrote
extensively on the motion of celestial bodies. His work were translated
into latin in the 12th century. In the late 10th century, a huge observatory was built near Tehran, Iran,
by the astronomer al-Khujandi who observed a series of meridian
transits of the Sun, which allowed him to calculate the obliquity of
the ecliptic. In Persia, Omar Khayyam
(Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami)
compiled many astronomical tables and performed a reformation of the calendar which was more accurate than the Julian and came close to the Gregorian.
During the renaissance Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model of the Solar System. His work was defended, expanded upon, and corrected by Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler.
Kepler was the first to devise a system which described correctly the
details of the motion of the planets with the Sun at the center.
However, Kepler did not understand the reasons behind the laws he wrote
down. It was left to Newton's invention of celestial dynamics and his law of gravitation to finally explain the motions of the planets.
Stars were found to be far away objects. With the advent of spectroscopy it was proved that they were similar to our own sun, but with a wide range of temperatures, masses and sizes. The existence of our galaxy, the Milky Way,
as a separate group of stars was only proven in the 20th century, along
with the existence of "external" galaxies, and soon after, the
expansion of the universe seen in the recession of most galaxies from us. Cosmology made huge advances during the 20th century, with the model of the big bang heavily supported by the evidence provided by astronomy and physics, such as the cosmic microwave background radiation, Hubble's Law and cosmological abundances of elements.
For a more detailed history of astronomy, see the history of astronomy.