Quotes About Astronomy

Using his observations of the different shadows cast by sundials along the same meridian and a little number crunching, Eratosthenes made a calculation of the earth's diameter that was amazingly accurate: 7,850 miles, only about 60 off the actual mark.

All around him were stacks of books in Arabic on mathematics, astronomy, astrology, physics, and philosophy by various Greek and Arabic authorities. They included many works by Aristotle that no one in western Europe had opened in six hundred years.

Galileo's science managed to fuse the Platonist's faith in mathematics with the Aristotelian faith in experience as the basis of discovery. All his work on mechanics, optics, and astronomy was deeply rooted in experiment and empirical research. When experience proved ambiguous or unreliable, however, Galileo realized then that mathematics must take over.

This was perhaps the final irony. Galileo the obedient Roman Catholic became an overnight Protestant hero. He would be remembered as a champion not only of science, but of the principle of free inquiry versus papist tyranny, in Milton's words "a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscans and Dominicans licensed.

The limitations of Aristotle's teachings were becoming apparent just decades after his death. It was only after scientists began rigorously applying his methods instead of his doctrines that astronomy and physics and ultimately biology would begin to turn themselves around.

The revelation by modern physics of the void within the atom is more disturbing than the revelation by astronomy of the immense void of interstellar space.

Five times every hundred years there is a February . . . without a [full] moon.

The history of the astronomy of the nineteenth century will be incomplete without a catalogue of his labours. He was one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, and his attention to its affairs was as accurate and minute as if it had been a firm of which he was the chief clerk, with expectation of being taken into partnership.

Cosmology is a rapidly advancing field.

Once we see stars with three times the metal content of our sun, the planet detection rate goes up to 20 per cent.

One of the great things about the space program is it's super well-documented.

I've never owned a telescope, but it's something I'm thinking of looking into.

that prejudice in favor of milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.

The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.

Wonder if there is life on another planet? Let's suppose there is. Suppose further, that only one star in a trillion has a planet that could support life. If that were the case, then there would be at least 100 million planets that harbored life.

In elementary school, I read every single space book in the library about all the planets, about nebulas, about black holes. So for as long as I can remember, I've been just looking up at the stars and wondering what's out there and even what may be looking back at us.

I was drawn to astronomy by a teenage existential quest. Around 13, I was deep into wondering about the meaning of life and what I was doing here. I turned to religion, but that did nothing for me. I got to wondering where was here. So, I began studying astronomy and became enthralled by what I learned.

The ecclesiastical system of Rome, and particularly its leaders, for a thousand years and more thought that the earth is fixed and that everything else revolves about it.

The Kuiper Belt is the largest mapped structure in our planetary system, three times as big as all the territory from the sun out to Neptune's orbit.

We have a remarkably complete picture in many ways - and it could be that we're not accounting for something that's almost three-quarters of the entire universe.

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

One thing scientists do is to find order among a large number of facts, and one way to do that across fields as diverse as biology, geology, physics and astronomy is through classification.

The scientific content of Genesis 1-11 holds special significance for me because it revolutionized my thinking and, thus, changed my life's direction. Until I reached my late teens, my singular passion was science, astronomy in particular. My life's purpose was to learn more about the universe; nothing beyond that really interested me.

I was the one with a subscription to 'Sky and Telescope' magazine as a kid while my friends were reading 'Tiger Beat.'