We were all blown away on July 12, 2022 when NASA released a series of images from its James Webb Space Telescope. But how did we get to the point where we can see galaxies away when just a few hundred years ago it was a mystery that the Earth orbits the sun. In this episode that’s what I am trying to answer. We will start back with over 30k year old evidence of early astronomy and work our way through many of the major accomplishments that build to the modern day.

**There are two times in the episode where I use the term “astrology” instead of “astronomy.” Both of the times, I believe to be generally accurate. Astronomy is the branch of science which deals with celestial objects, space, and the physical universe as a whole. Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on human affairs and the natural world. In the case of the ancient world they seem to have taken on the latter perspective but it’s possible that my interpretation isn’t perfect. I am definitely not referring to zodiac astrology of the 20th and 21st century.**

Resources

First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope
https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/

A Solar Orbit
https://webb.nasa.gov/content/about/o...

Webb Compare
https://johnedchristensen.github.io/W...

History of Astronomy
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/l...

Celestial Fertility Guide
5 FEB 2003BYJOHN BOHANNON
https://www.science.org/content/artic....

Ice age star map discovered
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/na...

Gregorian Calendar
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Greg...

Georges Lemaître, Father of the Big Bang
https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curr...

Einstein's theory of general relativity
https://www.space.com/17661-theory-ge...

Hubble Space Telescope
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbl...

Mayans accurately predicted solar eclipses hundreds of years in the future
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/08/17...

The Nebra Sky Disk
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/33...

History of astronomy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...

Lunar calendar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar...