Overview

The advance in astronomy as primarily a progressive improvement in accurate plotting of the stars was reasserted about the middle of the fifteenth century, but within the next 150 years, the discoveries of physical aspects of stars would lead traditional astronomy toward the foundations of astrophysics. The rediscovery of ancient knowledge, called the Renaissance, had advanced in astronomy with improved applications of geometry and trigonometry. Traditional naked-eye sighting instruments progressed in accuracy from the mid-fifteenth century. Astronomers expanded their interest in accurate positional cataloguing by reevaluating ancient appraisal of the stars in terms of relative size and brightness. This led to discoveries of unusual traits in stars; some stars varied in brightness and appeared to pulsate. On rare occasions stars seemed to appear where none had been before. Studying and cataloguing stars by these new features expanded with the introduction and improvement...