High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Colonial American Astronomy can be traced to the time when the English began colonizing in the New World during the sixteenth century. They brought with them their interest in astronomy. At first, astronomical thought in America was based on Aristotelian philosophy, but interest in the new astronomy began to appear in Almanacs as early as 1659. Colonial astronomers applied the scientific method to their own work and despite their limited resources, they instigated momentum for further astronomical research in what later became the United States.