what did they use to see other planets in the past?

Question

without any question, the digital age has a proof of the existense of other planets. what about those people in the past, what instrument did they use to convince us that such creations exist?

Answer 1

Just the NAKED EYE!!

The history of astronomy is the study of humankind's early attempts to understand the skies. All people have looked up and wondered about the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, and their complex ballet of motion. Interpretations vary widely among cultures, but often the sky is considered as the abode of gods, where humans can never touch. The consideration of stars and planets as physical objects that obey knowable laws started in the Middle East (and somewhat in China) and has spread into cultures that are the intellectual heirs of the Greeks. A fairly modern view of the heavens only started in the early 1600's when Galileo first turned the newly invented telescope to the heavens and saw worlds in their own right. With the Newtonian revolution in physics, it was realized that stars were just Suns, and all obeyed the same Laws of Physics as hold here on the Earth. In the 1900's, the detailed study of everything up in the sky has become a major pursuit which is growing exponentially. The history of astronomy looks at all these perceptions and advances.

Answer 2

Well, a lot of the other planets, before air and light pollution, could be easily seen with the naked eye. Venus and mars appear quite bright even in the cities. People knew these objects were different from the stars, because they do not "twinkle" in the night sky. Once the telescope was invented and trained on the solar system, it became clear pretty quickly that the planets were other "earth like" objects. We've had that knowledge, now, for more that 500 years.

Answer 3

The first people to see planets just used their eyes.Some of the planets have been known to people for as long as they have been watching the stars. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can all be seen with the naked eye, so it's impossible to say who was the first human to discover them, and when that was!

Uranus was discovered by William Hershel on March 13, 1781. He was searching the sky with his telescope, and realized that Uranus was moving with respect to the stars. Other people had seen Uranus before--even marked it on their star charts--but they didn't realize that it wasn't a star.

Based on small perturbations in the orbit of Uranus, John Adams and Urbain Le Verier predicted the position of another, more distant planet. Though John Adam's prediction was first, by about a month, the observers Johann Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest used LaVerrier's position, and were the first people to observe the planet Neptune--and know what they were looking at--on September 18, 1846. Again, many people had seen Neptune before, including, surprisingly, Galileo Galilei, who noted a "star" in the field during his observations of Jupiter, which we now believe was actually Neptune.

Answer 4

The digital age has done almost nothing to add to our evidence for planets.

For the longest time people used their eyes. Almost all the planets visible from Earth are visible to the naked eye (only those beyond Jupiter and Saturn are not).

Beyond that telescopes were used.

No planets are visible outside our solar system. We know of their existence only by indirect observation, and these observations rely on basic physics (like stellar interferometry) not digitial technology. Though technology makes taking the very repetitive and painstaking measurements less painful.

Answer 5

Some planets in our solar system (Mercury, Mars, Venus and Jupiter, Saturn?) are visible to the naked eye.

Answer 6

Statistics and mathematcial relativity