It can probably be said, that astronomy can be seen as the oldest science we know of. It is even older than the study of the human body. Astronomy traces back to the first time humans observed the sky and wondered what secrets it held.
If we go back in time for about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, the different planets being seen from the earth were already used by the caveman to predict the different seasons, and thus letting them know, when animals changed their paths and went south for the winter. Later this knowledge of different seasons became vital for the agricultural sector to predict, when to sow the seeds.
The sun, the moon, and the stars were used to predict a lot of things, due to the ability of a constant motion across the sky.
Later astronomers to advise the emperors when the stars were in favorable positions used the stars. Here we come across Hi and Ho in the year 2159 B.C. who were beheaded due to the fact that they failed to predict an eclipse. In ancient Greek people used the stars to identify them with gods and use the power of the changing in the moons and stars to explain certain influences by the gods. Additional we can see that "the heavens were the television of the time, an enormous source of entertainment." (Frederic Golden)
In
the Middle Ages the believe was held by many astronomers, that Ptolemy’s
independent motion of the planets was true. According to him, the heavens
were "made up of rotating concentric crystal spheres nestled in each
other like bowls." (Frederic Golden)
It was up until Nicolaus Copernicus published a small, dryly mathematical text, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs) in 1543. He suggested, that the earth was not mere the center of the universe, but at that time it was very dangerous to announce those suggestions.
In 1608 with the invention of the telescope in Flanders by spectacle makers, it was the first step towards the future and the beginning of the exploration of the universe. In 1610 Galileo Galilei used this instrument to explorer the skies and to observe that the earth was not the center of our universe. In addition to the invention of the telescope, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler formulated the three laws of . This led to the formulation of the theory of gravity by Britain’s Sir Isaac Newton ,which could tell astronomers for the first time where any body in the solar system should be at any particular time, with uncanny accuracy
.
In 1790 John Michell already thought about the problem what would happen "to the escape velocity for a body as the mass increased." At that time light was treated as particles, which led to the assumption that for "a sufficiently massive body the escape velocity would exceed the speed of light." Therefore being a reasonable statement for the existence of black holes in the universe.