Ancient Skies

Take a closer look at John Harrison's Marine Chronometer, the device that solved the longitude problem.

In Episode 3, we complete the puzzle of our ancient skies, collecting the missing pieces required for an accurate model of our universe. We break through the spheres that defined our skies for millennia, abandon the long-held idea of circular orbits, discover new neighbors in our solar system, and begin to comprehend the enormity of our ever-growing universe.

Hear Jules Verne's story of an American Gun Club, which shot a projectile containing three men to the moon, from a giant cannon.

Danish Astronomer Tycho Brahe's observations of the Great Comet of 1577 overturn 1,500 years of scientific belief when he uses them to prove that planets do not orbit inside concentric crystalline spheres.

Georges Lemaître, Belgian priest and astronomer, used Albert Einstein's equations from the Theory of General Relativity to propose that the universe is expanding.

Explore ancient astronomer Ptolemy's model of the cosmos, which placed the Earth at the center of everything.

Take an in depth look at the celestial bodies discovered by Italian Renaissance astronomer Galileo Galilei, as he used his telescopes to look further into space than anyone had ever seen before.

Explore the ancient Greek myth of Odysseus, who encountered Scylla and Charybdis as he sailed toward the edge of the known world.

Episode two of this landmark series delves further into our ancient understanding of the skies above. After exploring the mysterious creatures living at the edge of the world, we follow the story of our earth as it takes shape and a place in the cosmos in the minds of great astronomers and scientists including Ptolemy, Copernicus and Galileo.

Get a glimpse into the Enuma Elis, the Babylonian myth that is the earliest surviving complete creation story.

In this episode we explore the origins of our relationship with the skies. From our earliest ancestors we discover how we used the skies to navigate and tell time, and how we gave religious significance to the things we saw in it. We finish on the cusp of a revolution that gave birth to modern science.

Astronomer Phil Plait explains how ancient civilizations used the skies to accurately align their buildings to the points of the compass.