2010 programme

Sun 4th
13:30-14:00

The Two Thomas' Contribution to 17th Century Astronomy

Sharon Harnett

Canberra Astronomical Society

Thomas Digges and Thomas Harriot were highly respected astronomers during the intellectual renaissance in England, on par with their better-known peers: Dee, Harvey, Gilbert and Galileo. However, today neither Digges nor Harriot are well known by the general public. A number of unfortunate incidents and circumstances resulted in both astronomers having to wait for several hundred years before their work became known to a wider audience. Digges’s contribution to the introduction of Copernican cosmology is often credited to the Dominican monk, Giordano Bruno. However Digges published the ideas of Copernicus in English and introduced the idea of an infinite universe in 1576, well before Bruno’s visit to England.
Harriot’s work was lost for several hundred years due to his reluctance to publish, and the inability of the executors of his will to adequately publish his work. His reasons not to publish are discussed, along with the discovery of his prior claim to be the first person to view the moon through a telescope. The likelihood of the involvement of Digges and Harriot in the development of an ‘Elizabethan telescope’, in the late 1570s is discussed.

Sharon Harnett

Sharon has been interested in astronomy since she was old enough to stare up at the stars. Although her career has taken her in a different direction she has retained a keen interest in observational astronomy, dragging out her various telescopes (currently a 8" Celestron) whenever possible. Sharon is also interested in the history of astronomy, particularly the emergence of the 'new astronomy' in early modern England. Sharon is studying her Masters in Science (Astronomy) through Swinburne University, and suspects that she's crossed the line between interested hobbyist and astronomy nerd.