How Far Away Is It - 03 - The Solar System (4K)

Text at Index - Music free version at In this segment of our video book, we cover distances inside our Solar System. We start out with a brief history beginning with how Nicolas Copernicus used planetary retrograde motion to help move us from the Earth-centric view to the Sun-centric view of our Solar System. We work our way through the contributions made by: Tycho Brahe and his detailed observations made with mural quadrants and sextants; Kepler and his mathematics of elliptical orbits; and Galileo with his observations using the newly invented telescope. We conclude this history with Newton and his theory of gravity. Gravity gives us the first opportunity to explain the inverse square law that will play such a central role in celestial distant measurements a