Records: the Rise of Astronomy

## **The Observation of the Heavens**

Looking up at the stars of a night sky was as old eyes that could focus.

The ancients had created their catalog of stories based on the patters they could trace between the ineffable points of light in the night sky. The steady, guiding star of Polaris, the bear of Ursa, the trio of the belt of Orion – these were assigned meaning and passed through the generations.

Finding patterns was what humans did well, while separating correlation and causation was still a work in progress. Thus study of the night sky gave rise to astrology, and positions of the stars gave warning on what was about to happen. A form of intelligence gathering, it actually had some power behind it, but not for the reasons people thought.

When everybody was calling from the same playbook, or singing from the same hymnal, the meanings were taken to heart of those who believed. Even if there were no inherent stellar influence on human behavior, that humans believed it turned it into a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that drove each other's actions. Thus the power of astrology was valid because the widespread belief affected behavior and proved its validity.

That was astonishingly frustrating to the likes of the Order of Merlin.

### **Naked-Eye Astronomy**

Richard, original recipe, believed the conventional wisdom of the time. Richard 2.0 had been shackled with the burden of *knowledge*, and like taking one bite from the apple, now realized that there was no going back. Likewise, having knowledge far beyond the understanding of his earthly peers, he could say the technical words to explain it all, but without building the context, there was no understanding of what any of it really meant.

Herein, even young Richard (and eventually brother Edward and their broadening circle) looked for ways to open eyes in a different way when looking at the sky. The young prince brought back the classics, forming a foundation that they could build from.

In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos estimated the size and distance of the Moon and Sun, and he proposed a model of the Solar System where the Earth and planets rotated around the Sun, now called the heliocentric model. In the 2nd century BC, Hipparchus discovered precession, calculated the size and distance of the Moon and invented the earliest known astronomical devices such as the astrolabe. Hipparchus also created a comprehensive catalog of 1020 stars, and most of the constellations of the northern hemisphere derive from Greek astronomy. The Antikythera mechanism (c. 150–80 BC) was an early analog computer designed to calculate the location of the Sun, Moon, and planets for a given date. Technological artifacts of similar complexity did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks appeared in Europe.

It went on and on, but the list of classical contributions of Natural Philosophy already somewhat diverged with common beliefs that supported the astrologers. Astrology, at that point, had a guiding hand in just about everything at that point, including medicine. This was... *counterproductive*.

The recent rise of optics and the invention of the telescope had taken the Prince's reminders of the observations of those who had come before, and pushed it in a whole new direction.

Thus was born the modern science of Astronomy.

### **What Might Have Been Heresy**

Telescopes were turned to the skies almost as fast as they were turned toward the neighbor's window. The shadows of the moon gave rise to ideas of mountains, while single points of light revealed themselves to be sparkling blankets of scintillating gems. Two years of RANP geniuses unleashed on telescopes had done their damage to conventional wisdom.

One significant controversy brewing across European courts was the observations of an Italian in the English Academy. This scholar had identified that planets were not, in fact, stars that simply moved across the sky in relation to a star field, but rather were specific heavenly bodies. Further, each planet had a shape and an apparent color, and in the case of Saturn, *rings*.

The chariots of the gods: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus... *could be whole different worlds?!*

Later that year, it was also discovered, and publicized, that there were smaller bodies that orbited those planets. Jupiter and Saturn each appeared to have their own moons. *A moon, circling Saturn!*For astrologers of the time, that somethind didn't circle the earth was unthinkable and unimaginable. For some who found no mention of this in the bible, it was nothing short of heresy.

On the bright side, modern Rome under Pope Urban was quite enamored with the idea. *Discovered by an Italian, no less...?* The Jesuits were on the case, confirming the findings and explainging it to the Curia. It was almost as miraculous as the divine magic that was now healing victims of plague.

This line of discovery went on, including the resolution of what had been thought to be very cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see individually without a telescope. Other observations followed, including the phases of Venus and the existence of sunspots.

While this was still well beyond the average population (where literacy was still in the vast minority), it sent dangerous reverberations to those who relied on the old ways. In particular, while this didn't challenge *Jesuit* philosophy per se, it challenged established mythic answers to ancient questions.

Naturally, the RANP was there to poke the hornet's nest.

## **The Lens to Uncover the Secrets**

### **The Royal Observatory founded at Cambridge University**

The University of Cambridge had a few advantages. First, it was a formative part of the RANP itself. It's charter was founded and honored by a Crown that was now part of the iconoclasts themselves. And they had real estate...

Cambridge bid on the RANP project to give home to a facility dedicated to the science of the stars. The pedigree was tremendous: it was the first university to be chartered in England (1231), by Henry III of England (King Edward's great-great-grandfather), and it was older than any of the individual colleges within it. The university was a *studium generale*for nearly a century already, emphasizing scholastic philosophy, but Richard’s *Naturalist Method* had been making waves.

The construction of an observatory began just outside Cambridge, under the operation of Cambridge University, and the supervision of the Royal Academy. It was an embarrassment that England was so unequipped. Rhodes, Greece, had a formal research observatory since c.150 BC. There was the Al-Shammisiyyah observatory, in Baghdad, around since 825. From within India, the Royal Academy had descriptions and plans of the Mahodayapuram Observatory, Kerala (built in 869). In Azerbaijan, from 1259, the Maragheh observatory. Shortly after, in 1276, the Chinese built the Gaocheng Astronomical Observatory.

The difference now was that the RANP was the first to install a telescope.

#### **The Observatory**

The bulk of the building went around a magnificent, fantastically heavy piece of optical engineering designed to pierce the heavens. When installed, it would be the biggest telescope in the world for another fifty years. The aiming apparatus was a motion-insulated brass astronomical sextant, the first of its kind. Further, counter-weights and pulleys were used to allow the observer to manipulate the instrument with ease, despite its enormous size.

Not just for pure astronomy, much of the observational capacity was continue refinement of navigational method and technique. There were giant pendulum clocks and all manner of cartographic equipment. The building itself was an engineering marvel, with grounds markers for true versus magnetic north, and the building itself aligned to True North. What might’ve been Alt-U built in Greenwich, London, instead went to Cambridge at the Royal Academy's Royal Observatory.