Claudius Ptolemy's Model Of Astronomy Research Paper

Claudius Ptolemy was an Egyptian astrologer in the 2nd century who’s theories of astronomy, known as the Almagest, which he based a model of the Universe which influenced Western and Arabic societies for the next 1,500 years. The Ptolemaic system is a geocentric cosmology assuming that the Earth is stationary and the centre of the universe. Ptolemy’s model showed that planets revolved around a point and that point revolved around another point which was earth. In order to explain the motion of the planets, Ptolemy combined eccentricity with an epicyclic model where he assumed the planets moved on a small sphere or circle, called an epicycle, that moved on a larger sphere or circle, called a deferent. The rotation around the first point was
This model was limited at the time as no technology was invented that could clearly look out into space so he had to create this model with just his bare eyes to see what planets movements were, a quadrant (used to determine the suns height above the horizon), a armillary sphere (which gave the planets a celestial latitude and longitude) and a tool which he invented himself called a Ptolemy rule. The Ptolemy rule was a stick held vertically with a line attached used to calculate the position and movement of the stars. It was not until the invention on the optical telescope prior to 1608 that Ptolemy’s model was definitively disproven. Another flaw was that he believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe and the Sun, Moon and all other planets revolved around it. Telescopes have improved further still from the optical telescope that could only be used at night in fine weather, to the all-weather Radio telescope which detect radio waves coming from space, to the Space telescope in which objects in the universe emit electromagnetic radiation such as infrared, X-rays and gamma rays, these are all blocked by the Earth's atmosphere, but can be detected by telescopes placed in orbit round the