Briefly explain the concept of celestial coordinates and spherical astronomy
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The celestial coordinate system, which serves modern astronomy so well, is firmly grounded in the faulty world-view of the ancients. They believed the Earth was motionless and at the center of creation. The sky, they thought, was exactly what it looks like: a hollow hemisphere arching over the Earth like a great dome. The stars? "They're fireflies," explains Timón in The Lion King, "stuck to that big, uh, blue-black thing up there."
The celestial dome with its starry decorations had to be a complete celestial sphere, early skywatchers realized, because we never see a bottom rim as the dome tilts and rotates around the Earth once a day. Part of the celestial sphere is always setting behind the western horizon, while part is always rising in the east. At any time half of the celestial sphere is above the horizon, half below.
Even today this is how the cosmic setup actually looks. Never mind that we're on a moving dust mote orbiting a star in the fringe of a galaxy. In astronomy, appearances and reality are more different than in any other area of human experience. Perhaps for this reason, astronomers are quite comfortable living with both — as long as the two are kept in their proper relationship. The celestial sphere, with its infinitely large radius, appears to turn daily around our motionless Earth, from which we use telescopes to examine wonders painted on its inside surface.
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