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Cosmology, how people thought about the heavens, was critical to successful and accurate celestial navigation.
Ptolemy: c. 150 CE, conceived an earth-centered model of universe.
Copernicus: 1543, published the sun-centered model of the universe we now use.
Kepler: Worked out mathematically elliptical planetary orbits and published this in 1609.
Galileo: Created the first practical telescope in 1609 and used it to find the moons of Jupiter.
Newton: In 1687 published the laws of motion that would be used to predict locations of celestial bodies, based on Kepler’s theories.
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