A mass sighting of celestial phenomena or unidentified flying objects (UFO) occurred in 1561 above Nuremberg (then a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire).This view is mostly dismissed by skeptics, some referencing Carl Jung's mid-twentieth century writings about the subject while others find that the phenomenon is likely to be a sun dog.

The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are within the belt of the zodiac.. In Western astrology, and formerly astronomy, the zodiac is divided into twelve …

In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space.Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex. There are only five such polyhedra:

Etymology. In English, the word "firmament" is recorded as early as 1250, in the Middle English Story of Genesis and Exodus.It later appeared in the King James Bible.The same word is found in French and German Bible translations, all from Latin firmamentum (a firm object), used in the Vulgate (4th century). This in turn is a calque of the Greek στερέωμᾰ (steréōma), also meaning …

According to Aristotle, the Sun, Moon, planets and stars – are embedded in perfectly concentric "crystal spheres" that rotate eternally at fixed rates.Because the celestial spheres are incapable of any change except rotation, the terrestrial sphere of fire must account for the heat, starlight and occasional meteorites. The lowest, lunar sphere is the only celestial sphere that actually …

Mathematically, an ellipse can be represented by the formula: = + ⁡, where is the semi-latus rectum, ε is the eccentricity of the ellipse, r is the distance from the Sun to the planet, and θ is the angle to the planet's current position from its closest approach, as seen from the Sun. So (r, θ) are polar coordinates.For an ellipse 0 < ε < 1 ; in the limiting case ε = 0, the orbit is a ...

The musica universalis (literally universal music), also called music of the spheres or harmony of the spheres, is a philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies – the Sun, Moon, and planets – as a form of music.The theory, originating in ancient Greece, was a tenet of Pythagoreanism, and was later developed by 16th-century astronomer …

On the Heavens (Greek: Περὶ οὐρανοῦ; Latin: De Caelo or De Caelo et Mundo) is Aristotle's chief cosmological treatise: written in 350 BC, it contains his astronomical theory and his ideas on the concrete workings of the terrestrial world. It should not be confused with the spurious work On the Universe (De mundo, also known as On the Cosmos).

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (English translation: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) of the Polish Renaissance.The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had …

Celestial motion, without additional forces such as drag forces or the thrust of a rocket, is governed by the reciprocal gravitational acceleration between masses.A generalization is the n-body problem, where a number n of masses are mutually interacting via the gravitational force. Although analytically not integrable in the general case, the integration can be well …

Paradiso (Italian: [paraˈdiːzo]; Italian for "Paradise" or "Heaven") is the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, following the Inferno and the Purgatorio.It is an allegory telling of Dante's journey through Heaven, guided by Beatrice, who symbolises theology.In the poem, Paradise is depicted as a series of concentric spheres surrounding the Earth, consisting of the Moon, …

The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy.The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. According to this theory, space and time emerged together 13.787 ± 0.020 billion years ago, and the universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang.

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion.The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun.Older texts frequently refer to the Orion …

Equivalents; Roman equivalent: Atlas: Egyptian equivalent: Shu: In Greek mythology, Atlas (/ ˈ æ t l ə s /; Greek: Ἄτλας, Átlas) is a Titan condemned to hold up the heavens or sky for eternity after the Titanomachy.Atlas also plays a role in the myths of two of the greatest Greek heroes: Heracles (Hercules in Roman mythology) and Perseus.According to the ancient Greek poet …