Roman Astronomy Research Paper

Words: 1219
Pages: 5

Delaney Hein
Behan, 8
Latin rough draft
April 18, 2018 Ancient Roman and Greek Astronomy
The universe has interested people since the beginning of time. The word cosmos came from the ancient Greeks as they discovered and studied the stars and the universe around them. Astronomy is the branch of science that studies the universe including the celestial objects in it and the space around them. Ancient Greeks and Romans made Astronomy a science as they tried to figure out how the universe worked thesis needs to explain all ideas of every paragraph. There were a number of achievements and discoveries these early astronomers made, as well as tools they used to make these discoveries. Thesis needs to be
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Julius Caesar knew that as Rome became a world power, they needed one calendar that the nation could depend on. Using what Roman astronomers had learned, they built a 365 day year. The priests at this time knew enough about the universe to include a leap year of 366 days every fourthfouth year. According to the website www.courses.lumenlearning.com, “ the Romans had dropped the almost impossible task of trying to base their calendar on the Moon as well as the Sun.” This is important because it allowed everyone to use it, even if they didnt have the knowledge of an …show more content…
Although he researched weather patterns and how astronomy worked in weather, his most important work dealt with his theories about the sun and moon. He also figured out the approximate size of the sun and the moon and how far away they were from the earth. He put together the dates of the equinoxes and solstices to calculate what he thought was the sun’s orbit. This also allowed astronomers to locate where the sun would be in orbit on a certain day. Another thing that Hipparchus did was create a large star catalog. He gave names to the stars he could see and made notes about where each one was located. Unfortunately this information was lost so people today cannot tell if what he found was accurate or not.
Ptolemy was another astronomer that later astronomers based their information on. Ptolemy even had a scientific theory named after him, called the Ptolemaic Theory. Like other astronomers in ancient times, he believed that the sun, moon, and stars all revolved around the earth. He used math to figure out how he thought all of these things were moving in circles around the earth. He thought there were at least 80 different orbits that were constantly moving. Since the ideas he had were able to be seen with the human eye, it was assumed that his theory was