1. Models of the Solar System
Models of the Solar System
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2. Models of the Solar System
Florida Benchmark
SC.8.E.5.8 Compare various historical models of the Solar System, including geocentric and heliocentric.
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3. Models of the Solar System
What is a planetary system?
A planetary system is a star and all of the celestial bodies that revolve around it.
An example of a planetary system is the solar system which includes the sun and the planets and other celestial bodies orbiting the sun.
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4. Models of the Solar System
What is the Center of the Solar System?
The early scientists, in their attempt to answer this fundamental question created various models of the solar system.
Models, which placed Earth at the center, are called Earth-centered, or geocentric, models.
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5. Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
The early philosopher and astronomer believed that everything in the universe is “perfect”; and that the planets are perfect spheres circling in perfect circular orbits.
They believed the Earth was the most important object in space and therefore assumed it to be the center of the universe.
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6. Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
Aristotle, a Greek philosopher reasoned that if Earth circled around the sun, then the relative positions of the stars would change as Earth moves.
This apparent change in the position of an object when viewed from different angles or locations on Earth is known as parallax.
What Aristotle did not take into account is the fact that stars are very far away. At such great distance parallax cannot be observed without a telescope.
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7. Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
The geocentric model of the solar system became a very important part of ancient Greek Astronomy beginning in the sixth century B.C.E.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) was among the first scholars to put forward an Earth-centered model of the Solar System.
His model positioned the moon, sun, planets, and stars on a series of circles that moved around Earth.
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8. Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
Aristarchus, a Greek astronomer and mathematician, is believed to have proposed a sun-centered model of the solar system.
Ptolemy an astronomer, geographer, and mathematician, exploited Aristotle’s Earth-centered view and developed a complex geocentric model that was used by astronomers over the next thousand years.
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9. Historical Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
According to Ptolemy’s model, the planets moved on small circles that in turn moved on larger circles.
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10. Historical Models of the Solar System
The Geocentric Model
Ptolemy’s “wheels-on-wheels” model seemed to make sense since it very well illustrated observations made at the time going back hundreds of years.
Scientist for many centuries used Ptolemy’s model to make predictions of the motions of planets years into the future.
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11. Historical Models of the Solar System
The Heliocentric Model (Sun-Centered)
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12. Models of the Solar System
The Heliocentric Model
The model which placed the sun at the center is called the heliocentric or sun-centered model.
The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus watered-down Ptolemy’s model of the solar system since he thought the model was way too complicated.
Although Copernicus adopted Ptolemy’s idea that planets’ orbits are perfect circles, he however developed Aristarchus’s primitive sun-centered model into a well thought out heliocentric model.
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13. Models of the Solar System
The Heliocentric Model
The heliocentric model was fiercely rejected until it was refined and published by Copernicus and J. Kepler, a German mathematician, in the late 16th to early 17th centuries.
Copernicus’s model eventually became more widely accepted as it fit observations significantly better than Ptolemy’s geocentric model.
Copernicus’s model is known as the most influential of modern astronomy.
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14. Models of the Solar System
The Heliocentric Model
Galileo Galilei was a scientist who conducted his experiments in the manner of moderns scientists. He actually used a very systematic approach very similar to the scientific methods.
Galileo’s observations showed that they are other celestial objects beside Earth with orbiting satellites.
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15. Models of the Solar System
The Heliocentric Model
His discovery best fit the heliocentric model.
Galileo also observed that Venus went through phases similar to the phases of Earth’s moon.
The observation of these phases was more in line with the idea that planets revolve around the sun rather than the Earth.
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