Events in 2015

.     Years     Events to Commemorate
.     Ago

  • 1000      Ibn Al-Haytham publishes works on optics (1015)
  • 340        Greenwich Observatory founded (1675)
  • 330        Father Tachard, French Jesuit priest, sets up an observatory near the Castle in Cape Town (1685)
  • 310        Peter Kolbe becomes the first officially sanctioned Astronomer in South Africa (1705)
  • 200        Notion of light as a wave proposed by Fresnel (1815)
  • 180        14-foot Herschel telescope installed at Cape Observatory; Maclear observes Halley’s Comet (1835)
  • 170        The “Leviathan” at Birr Castle is completed, by William Parsons, third Earl of Rosse (1845)
  • 170        First Daguerrotype photograph of the Sun is taken, by J L B Foucault and A Fizeau (1845)
  • 170        Le Verrier predicts the existence of Neptune (1845)
  • 150        Electromagnetic theory of light propagation proposed by Maxwell (1865)
  • 150        Time ball installed at Port Elizabeth and operated electronically from Cape Observatory (1865)
  • 120        Wilhelm Rontgen discovers X-rays (1895)
  • 110        Albert Einstein publishes his theory of the photoelectric effect (1905)
  • 110        Gill’s Reversable Transit Circle at Cape Observatory becomes operational after long delay (1905)
  • 110        Transvaal Meteorological Department opened, with R T A Innes as Director (1905)
  • 100        Albert Einstein publishes his General Theory of Relativity (1915)
  • 100        R T A Innes discovers Proxima Centauri (1915)
  • 90         26.5-inch telescope installed at Union Observatory (1925)
  • 90         Brukkaros Solar Observatory (Karas region, Namibia) established (1925)
  • 90         Edwin Hubble shows that the Andromeda Nebula (Messier 31) is an independent galaxy (1925)
  • 60         45-cm Cox-Hargreaves telescope installed at Cape Observatory (1955)
  • 50         Penzias and Wilson discover cosmic microwave background (1965)
  • 50         First space walk, by Alexei Leonov aboard Voskhod 2 (1965)
  • 40         First observations with Very Large Array (Soccoro, USA) (1975)
  • 30         20-cm coelostat installed at Boyden Observatory (1985)
  • 25         Hubble Space Telescope launched (1990)
  • 20         Galileo spacecraft visits Jupiter (1995)
  • 10         Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) opened (2005)

Visit the Events to commemorate page.