AstroRara – Interactively explore historic astronomical research illustrations
Journey to the stars with AstroRara, a platform that allows anyone to interactively explore historic astronomical illustrations and learn fascinating facts about the authors and their works.
The phases of the moon, constellations, sunspots – do you know how researchers from generations gone by recorded their observations of the skies? How did renowned astronomers like Peter Apian (1495–1552), Christoph Scheiner (1575–1650) and Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687) document their findings?
New on AstroRara: Galileo Galilei
A new work, “Sidereus nuncius”, is now available online: Galilei’s observations of Jupiter’s moons from February 1610. AstroRara allows you to compare his printed moon positions with the back-calculated positions of the moons derived through the application of celestial mechanics.
Good to know: The new FAQ make it even easier to use AstroRara.
What is AstroRara?
AstroRara, an offer by the ETH Library, allows you to interactively explore and study historic astronomical illustrations. Find out more about the models and the phenomena observed in the night sky and explore the works of renowned scientists.
Additional background information about the authors and their works is also contained in explanatory texts that are available as audio files, so you can also listen to them. Look forward to the new content, which will be added continuously.
#KnowMore – The prepared content issued by the ETH Library is at your free disposal and gives you a head start.
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