Definition of firmament - What it is, Meaning and Concept

The term firmamentum came to Spanish as firmament .It is a concept that refers to the celestial vault : the apparent sphere that is found surrounding the surface of our planet.

Firmamento, celestial vault and even sky are notions that can be used as synonyms in certain contexts., there is talk of a firmament regarding the place where the stars and the rest of the stars or celestial bodies are apparently .

The origin of the idea of ​​firmament is in antiquity, when it was believed that the stars were fixed or firm in the celestial vault. Claudio Ptolemy (100-170), Nicolas Copernico (1473-1543) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) are some of the scientists who developed their theories based on this belief of firm stars in the sky.

The British Edmund Halley (1656-1742) was the one who, in the century XVIII , showed that the stars were not fixed in the celestial sphere.Anyway, the concept of continuous firmament being used until today.

Nowadays, a sky is often used to refer to the infinite space in which the different stars move .Observed from the Earth , the sky seems semi-spherical.

It is important to remember that not even the many technological advances we have today are enough to reach the most recognized corners of the universe ; on the contrary, solid knowledge about reality outside our planet is scarce, since the rest is a set of theories that have not yet been proven.

In this way, if we go back in time a few centuries, when the human being did not have an arsenal of tools and scientific concepts like those he has today, it is logical that he has come to think that the stars were fixed in the firmament, saving the differences, this idea has been reflected more than once in fiction stories, with the intention of generating a touch of humor by telling the reader that one of the characters sees the cosmos in such a small way.

Claudio Ptolemy was the author of the geocentric theory , according to which our planet is at the very center of the universe and all the stars revolve around it, including the Sun.It is a observation made almost two millennia ago, when talking about the sphere of fixed stars , a "shell" that represented the edge of the universe.

At that time it was considered that the stars were fixed because they did not seem to move with respect to the others when observed at night.The only exception was the Sun, which if it was seen moving throughout the day and when the first appeared stars.Everything arose when students of astronomy and philosophy grouped the celestial lights in two: on the one hand, they located the ones that supposedly went out and put themselves without altering their disposition with the passage of time ; in the other group they included what they called wandering stars .

In the latter were the five planets that can be seen without the help of a telescope (Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter) and also the Sun and the Moon.It is curious that in the long The path that led the human being from the notion of firmament to the knowledge he has today has confused the planets with the stars and satellites on more than one occasion.

In the colloquial language, the set of celebrities (that is, stars) of a certain area is known as firmament.Accessing the firmament, in this sense, implies reaching the fame (to stardom).For example: "With this new title, the player finally entered the firmament of the national sport" , "The firmament of actors and actresses did again gala of your solidarity in the traditional charity dinner held every year ”, “ I am not interested in being part of the sky: I sing because it gives me pleasure ”.