The Great Vedic Astronomy🔗

Man has been deeply fascinated by the Cosmos since the beginning of time. Early cultures worked on understanding the phenomena that happen in the sky; they observed them in order to understand what role the sky played in their lives. From these attempts, the science of astronomy was born.

In this field, the ancient Vedic contribution is well known. The earliest references to astronomy are found in the Ṛg Veda, which are dated 2000 BC. Around 500 BCE, Āryabhaṭa, a great astronomer, presented a system that showed the earth to spin on its axis and considered the motions of the planets with respect to the Sun. He also discovered how the lunar and solar eclipses occur and was the earliest to discover that the orbits of the planets around the Sun are ellipses, just as Copernicus and Galileo concluded a thousand years later. He even determined the diameter of the Earth to be 5,000 yojanas, approximately 36,000 km, which is very close to the actual figure.

These traditions related these objects and their movements to natural events such as rain, drought, seasons and tides; they related them to auspicious or inauspicious occurrences on planet Earth. Jyotisa, the science of Vedic astrology, took birth out of observations and perceptions based on these astronomical phenomena. The first astronomers were actually Ṛsis and sages, who understood the sky was a divine happening; they identified celestial objects with energies and Gods and connected astronomy to astrology.