J.R.R TOLKIEN

In one of Aristarchus' books that did survive, he laid out the earliest known attempted calculations of the sizes and distances to the Sun and Moon.

From solar eclipses, where the Moon passes in front of the Sun, they realised that the Sun was further away. Aristarchus estimated that t...

We see different parts of the Moon light up at different times of the month. This is because the Moon is at different positions in its orbit around Earth relative to the Sun.

• A full Moon is when the Moon, Earth and Sun are lined up. The sunlight shines on the whole l...

Galileo Galilei, a contemporary of Kepler, built a telescope and began fixing its lens on the planets. He made a series of remarkable discoveries: that the moon was not flat and smooth, there were spots on the sun, Jupiter had moons that orbited it, Venus had phases like the moon, which proved th...