1618: Johannes Kepler confirms his Third Law of Planetary Motion (the Harmonic Law). it establishes a precise mathematical relationship between a planet's distance from the Sun and its orbital period. This fundamental discovery later enabled Isaac Newton to formulate the Law of Universal Gravitation and remains indispensable today for calculating the trajectories of space probes.

1836: British astronomer Francis Baily observes and describes for the first time the phenomenon of "Baily's beads" during an annular solar eclipse. These points of light, which appear on the lunar limb just before and after totality, are caused by sunlight passing through the valleys and mountains of the Moon. This observation confirmed the irregularity of the lunar relief.

Ai-generated image by Perplexity