Tycho reached the limits of what could be done with the naked eye. A
new technology was required to extend our vision: the telescope. This
lecture introduces Galileo Galilei, the contemporary of Kepler who was
in many ways the first modern astronomer, and describes his many
discoveries with the telescope. These observations electrified Europe
in the early ... Show More
Oct 2007
Lecture 17: On the Shoulders of Giants: Isaac Newton and the Laws of Motion
Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho, and Galileo together gave us a new way of looking at the motions in the heavens, but they could not explain why the planets move they way the do. It was to be the work of Isaac Newton who was to sweep away the last vestiges of the Aristotelian view of t ... Show More
44m 47s
Mar 2006
Lecture 44: Life, the Universe, and Everything (Life Part II)
How can we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and what are we looking for? This second part of a 2-part lecture picks up where we left off yesterday by examining SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, and reviews what we might look for and how. We will use thi ... Show More
45m 56s
Sep 2006
Lecture 2: Astronomical Numbers
Before we can begin our exploration of astronomy, we need to develop a
common language for notating large numbers, and introduce the basic
units of length, mass, and time that we will use throughout the quarter.
We will first re-introduce the basic metric system, explaining how t ... Show More
43m 29s