Observe the sky with the naked eye

Observe the sky with the naked eye

Curiosity and the need to know what was happening in heaven has led man from its origins to observe it carefully. Long before the appearance of the telescope and other technologies, astronomical calculations were already performed with the naked eye or the naked eye. For this the great natural structures were used. Mountains, mountains or large rocks served as landmarks.

Natural observatories

Over the years, astronomers of prehistory and antiquity began to place aligned monoliths to indicate those ideal places to contemplate the sky. Thus emerged the first natural observatories.

This is the case of the Newgrange solar observatory in Ireland, built in the XXXIV century BC. Also, between the years 3150 to 2500 a. C., on the island of Malta the megalithic complex of the Hagar Qim temple was built, which showed solar and lunar alignments.

First approach to science

Towards the 6th century B.C. Something began to change. Until then, the will of the gods was enough to explain everything. The first naturalist philosophers began to look for a logic in the natural order that related phenomena to each other. According to that innovative idea, man could understand and describe nature, including heaven, using the mind. For something one starts.

Those first scientists (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes), gathered in Miletus, observed the sky and the Earth, elaborated nautical charts and raised hypotheses about the Earth, the planets, the stars and the laws that describe their movements. Science, understood as a rational interpretation of what is observed, thus began its journey. Of course, most of humanity continued to believe in gods and spirits. In this, we have changed little.

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Origin of the celestial observationA handmade telescope