There can only be a few people who have not gazed at the stars and pondered over the mysteries of the universe and man's place in it. Some people spend most of their lifetime studying various celestial objects. By the very act of looking at the sky we become involved with astronomy. Astronomy tells a fascinating story, a tale made all the more enthralling by the ease with which any one can participate in astronomical observations. In the following sections, we present a brief introduction to this intriguing subject.
We start off with a brief history of Indian astronomy and mention some of the great Indian astronomers. Then we highlight the Indian perspective of astronomy as we proceed. We will also look at the Indian Calendar and its uniqueness.
There are two major aspects to Indian astronomy. One is observation and the other is calculation. In the following sections, we'll focus more on the observation part. From time immemorial, Man observed that heavenly bodies like sun, moon, stars etc. don't remain stationary, but keep changing their positions. This made him to think that all heavenly bodies move around the earth and all his theories about the other heavenly bodies were based upon this assumption. This concept of earth being the centre of the universe is called Geocentric model of the universe. Indian astronomy is based on this. This method is easy to understand since it is purely based on observation. After Copernicus, we know that Sun is the centre of solar system and the earth revolves around this. (This is known as the heliocentric model). But it is interesting to note that, all the calculations and theories developed by the Indian astronomers using the geocentric model still hold good. We will take a look at these in detail as we go on.
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