the earth rounds. sun articles
Answers
Explanation:
We had no direct view of Earth until the dawn of the Space Age. Finding physical evidence that our planet revolves around the Sun took some clever thinking to prove that this heliocentric model of our solar system represents reality.
The idea is ancient. Around 230 b.c., the Greek philosopher Aristarchus suggested that this was the case. He was an outstanding observer and based this idea on careful observations. Still, without direct proof that Earth moves, Aristotle’s Earth-centered universe remained the dominant model for centuries.
In 1610, Galileo turned his new telescope toward Venus. To his amazement, he saw the planet pass through phases just like the Moon. Galileo correctly surmised that this could happen only if Venus had an orbit closer to the Sun than Earth’s orbit.
With improved telescopes, astronomers started looking for another proof of Earth’s motion around the Sun, stellar parallax. Earth’s orbit is huge — some 186 million miles (300,000 kilometers) in diameter. If an astronomer measures the position of a nearby star, and then measures it again six months later, the star’s apparent position against the background of more distant stars should shift a tiny amount.
Observing this would prove that Earth in fact is not stationary. It wasn’t until 1838 that an astronomer finally detected this shift. That year, German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel successfully measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni.
Answer:
Explanation:
If the Earth is moving around the sun, then there should be an apparent shift of the positions of stars. This is called stellar parallax. Parallax is the thing your phone uses to place virtual objects in the camera view (like ARkit in Apple's iOS).