Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology

Timeline of telescopes, observatories, and observing technology.

Contents

Timeline

Before Christ era

  • 1800 BC - Babylonian star catalog
  • 3100-1700 BC - Stonehenge
  • 1130 BC - Assyrian star catalog
  • 432 BC - Athens observatory on Lycabettus Hill used by Meton and Phaeinus
  • 350s BC - Eudoxus of Cnidos observatory, school at Cyzicus
  • 350 BC - Shin Shen's star catalog has almost 800 entries
  • 330 BC - Aristotle On the Heavens [De Caelo]
  • 200 BC - Astrolabe used by Greeks
  • 150 BC - Rhodes observatory
  • 129 BC - Hipparchus' star catalog
  • 105 BC - Alexandria observatory and College of Technology under Heron
  • 52 BC - Shou-chang uses armillary ring
  • 28 BC - record of sunspot activity begins in China

AD 1 - 999

  • ca. 60 - Geminus Introduction to Celestial Phenomena
  • 141 - Claudius Ptolemy Megale Mathematike Syntaxis [or Almagest]
  • 150 - Hipparchus star catalog depicted on Farnese statue of Atlas
  • 499 - Aryabhata Aryabhatiya
  • 646 - Cheomseongdae astronomical observatory near Kyongju, South Korea (formerly Silla)
  • 790 - Gundishapur observations by al-Nihawandi
  • 813 - Baghdad School of Astronomy
  • 825 - Dicuil "De Mensura Orbis Terrae"
  • 828 - al-Shammasiyya observatory of Abi Mansur near Baghdad
  • 831-2 - Mount Qasiyun observatory near Damascus
  • 840 - al-Farghani Compendium of the Science of the Stars
  • 887 - Raqqa observatory of al-Batani in Syria
  • 963 - al-Sufi's star catalog Book of the Fixed Stars
  • 988 - Baghdad observatory of al-Quhi and al-Buzjani
  • ca. 900 - Hanlin Academy observatory in Northern China
  • 994 - Ray observatory of al-Khujandi near Tehran, Iran

1000s

1100s

  • 1119-25 - Cairo al-Bataihi observatory for al-Afdal

1200s

1400s

1500s

1600s

1700s

1800s

1900s

  • 1904 - Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington founded

1910s

1930s

1940s

  • 1946 - Martin Ryle and his group perform the first astronomical observations with a radio interferometer
  • 1947 - Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 218-foot non-steerable radio telescope
  • 1949 - Palomar 48-inch Schmidt optical reflecting telescope begins operation, located in Palomar, California
  • 1949 - Palomar 200-inch optical reflecting telescope (Hale telescope) begins regular operation, located in Palomar, California

1950s

  • 1954 - Earth rotation aperture synthesis suggested (see e.g. Christiansen and Warburton (1955))
  • 1957 - Bernard Lovell and his group complete the Jodrell Bank 250-foot (75-meter) steerable radio telescope
  • 1957 - Peter Scheuer publishes his P(D) method for obtaining source counts of spatially unresolved sources
  • 1959 - Radio Observatory of the University of Chile, located at Maipú founded

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

  • 2001 - First light at VLTI optical aperture synthesis array. Operations in the interferometry mode of VLT start at ESO, with 103 m baseline

References

Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy ISBN 0521411580

History of Science and Technology ISBN 0-87196-475-9

Wilson Chronology of Science and Technology ISBN 0-8242-0933-8

Encyclopedia of the history of Arabic science ISBN 0415124107

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