Chapter 2

INTRODUCTION TO ASTROPHYSICS
COURSE CODE: PHY1209
COURSE ORGANISER: Dr. Trust Otto
Department of Physics, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, trust.otto@yahoo.com/otrust@must.ac.ug

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History fo Astronomy

The geocentric (Earth-centred) universe of the ancient

I Scientists of the 1500s and 1600s inherited a model of the universe

whose basic features had been defined by Aristotle 2000 years earlier.
I Earth was stationary at the center and the Sun, Moon, and other
planets all moved around Earth.
I Each object was fixed to a spinning crystalline sphere.
I The stars were all fixed to an outermost sphere and were also carried
around the Earth in circular orbits.
I Rest was the natural state of any object, so a mysterious power was
required to keep the celestial bodies in motion.
I This cozy arrangement fits with the powerful idea that humans were
at the center of creation.

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History fo Astronomy

I The Ptolemy’s most successful realization of the Greek model was

anything but simple.
I Motion seen from the center of a circular orbit is uniform.
I Yet it was known that the planets do not move among the stars at a
constant rate.
I To account for this Ptolemy was forced to hypothesize that the center
of the motion was displaced from the Earth, like the eccentric motion
of a wheel when the hub is not at the center.
I Also, it was known that some planets can reverse their steady
eastward motions among the stars – a phenomenon called retrograde
motion.
I The Ptolemaic model, therefore, required the planets not only to
move in circles around Earth but also to move along smaller circles,
called epicycles, around imaginary points along the main circular
orbits.
I The distance to the stars was at least a million miles.
I The outermost crystalline sphere had to be whirring around at over a
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The geocentric (Earth-centred) universe of the ancient

I A planet rotating on an epicycle

which is itself rotating around a
deferent inside a crystalline
sphere.
I The center of the system is
marked with an X, and the Earth
is slightly off of the center.
I Opposite the Earth is the
equant point, which is what the
planetary deferent would
actually rotate around.
Figure: A simple illustration showing the
basic elements of Ptolemaic astronomy.4 / 21
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History fo Astronomy

How good was the Ptolemaic model?

I Initially, the predictions were accurate to one or two arc minutes (this
is about as good as the resolution of the human eye).
I But the eccentric motions adopted by Ptolemy were just
approximations to the true motions of the planets and over the
centuries the errors began to accumulate.
I By the 13th century, the predictions of the model could be off by as
much as one or two degrees, several times the angular diameter of the
Moon.
I Astronomers had to make increasingly complicated adjustments to
the model in order to get correct answers.
I They even had to add tiny epicycles onto the larger epicycles.

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The geocentric (Earth-centred) universe of the ancient

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History fo Astronomy

The heliocentric (Sun-centred) universe (the Copernicus

model)

I Nicolaus Copernicus observed a

passage of planets close to each
other as seen in the sky.
I He found that their positions
departed by several degrees from
an earlier set of Ptolemaic
predictions.
I He suggested that the Sun is
the center of the solar system,
the planets move around it, and
the stars are immeasurably more Figure: Nicolaus Copernicus, portrait
distant. from Town Hall in Thorn/Toruń - 1580.
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The heliocentric (Sun-centred) universe (the Copernicus

model)

I Nicolaus Copernicus assumed

that the planet orbits must be
perfect circles.
I Because of this, his model did
not predict the positions of the
planets any more accurately
than Ptolemy’s.
I This model accounts for
retrograde motion of some
planets naturally with their
different speeds in their orbits. Figure: Copernican model of the
universe.
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History fo Astronomy

Tycho Brahe

I Tycho Brahe took the next step

towards confirming Copernicus’
hypothesis.
I He noticed the errors in the
planet positions predicted by the
old Ptolemaic system.
I This led to his lifelong interest
in recording positions of planets.
I He made observations that
challenged key elements of
Aristotle’s conception of the
universe. 9 / 21
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History fo Astronomy

Tycho Brahe

I In 1572, he observed an
exploding star that temporarily
brightened and then faded.
I This exciting observation
refuted the ancient belief that
the stars were forever
unchanging, mounted on their
starry crystalline sphere.
I Five years later he tracked the
motion of a bright comet from
night to night and compared his Figure: SN 1572, Tycho’s Supernova,
data with that of observers in the remnant of the supernova explosion
other parts of Europe. that Tycho Brahe noticed in 1572.

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History fo Astronomy

Tycho Brahe

I The comet always formed the same

pattern with respect to the stars as seen
by any observer.
I Tycho was able to show that it was
much further away than the Moon and
not an atmospheric phenomenon as
Aristotle had taught.
I By demonstrating that stars and planets
show no angular shift compared to the
stars as our position shifts with the
rotation of Earth, Tycho proved that Figure: One of Tycho Brahe’s
stars and planets were many times notebooks.
farther away than the Moon.
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Johannes Kepler

I Before Tycho died he named Kepler as

his successor.
I Kepler inherited the mass of Tycho’s
observations and began analyzing the
planetary positions.

Figure: A 1610 portrait of

Johannes Kepler by an unknown
artist.
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Kepler’s discoveries

I Kepler’s first law

of planetary
motion states
that each planet
orbits the Sun on
an elliptical path,
with the Sun at
one focus.

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Kepler’s discoveries

I Kepler’s second law of planetary motion

states that a planet speeds up when it
is near the Sun and slows down when it
is far away.
I In other words, if you imagine a line
connecting a planet to the Sun, the line
sweeps out equal areas in equal
intervals of time.
I This is a simple consequence of the
conservation of angular momentum
(L = r × m v)

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Kepler’s discoveries

I Kepler’s third law states that the square of the orbital period is
proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis:

P 2 ∝ a3

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Isaac Newton

I Kepler deduced that elliptical orbits were a good description or model

of the motions of the planets.
I He also found patterns in the motions and spacing of the planets that
supported the Copernican hypothesis.
I Astronomers now needed a complete physical theory to explain and
predict the observed phenomenon.
I To be successful, the theory would have to start with a few universal
principles and show that Kepler’s elliptical orbits were a consequence
of these principles.

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Newton’s laws of motion

Newton’s laws of motion are the basis of the subject of mechanics; the
study of the way objects move. They can be summarized as follows:
I An object stays at rest or in constant motion unless an unbalanced
force acts on it.
I An object responds to a force with an acceleration that is proportional
to the force and in the direction of the force, and inversely
proportional to the mass.
I For every force on an object, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

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Newton’s universal law of gravitation

I It states that any particle of matter in the universe attracts any other
with a force varying directly as the product of the masses and
inversely as the square of the distance between them.
I If we have two masses MA and MB , separated by a distance R, then
Newton’s law of gravity gives the force between mass A and mass B
as:
GMA MB
F =
R2
I The number G is the gravitational constant, a fundamental constant
of nature.
I If we measure mass in kilograms, distance in meters, and force in the
normal units of Newtons (N), G = 6.67 × 10−11 N m2 kg2 .

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Geocentric and Heliocentric models of the universe, Video

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History fo Astronomy

Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Video

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Gravity, Video

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