The following is a timeline of Solar System astronomy and science. It includes the advances in the knowledge of the Earth at planetary scale, as part of it.
Direct observation
Humans (Homo sapiens) have inhabited the Earth in the last 300,000 years at least, and they had witnessed directly observable astronomical and geological phenomena. For millennia, these have arose admiration and curiosity, being admitted as of superhuman nature and scale. Multiple imaginative interpretations were being fixed in oral traditions of difficult dating, and incorporated into a variety of belief systems, as animism, shamanism, mythology, religion and/or philosophy.
Although such phenomena are not "discoveries" per se, as they are part of the common human experience, their observation shape the knowledge and comprehension of the world around us, and about its position in the observable universe, in which the Sun plays a role of outmost importance for us. What today is known to be the Solar System was regarded for generations as the contents of the "whole universe".
The most relevant phenomena of these kind are:
Basic gravity. Following the trajectory of free falling objects, the Earth is "below" us and the sky is "above" us. Characterization of the terrestrial surface, in four main types of terrain: lands covered with vegetation; dry deserts; bodies of liquid water, both salted (seas and oceans) and fresh (rivers and lakes); and frozen landscapes (glaciars, polar ice caps). Recognition of emerged lands and submerged ones. Recognition of mountain ranges and cavities (grottos and caverns). Characterization of the Earth's atmosphere and its associated meteorological phenomena: clouds, rain, hail and snow; wind, storms and thunderstorms, tornadoes and hurricanes/cyclones/typhoons; fluvial floods, deluges, landslides and avalanches; rainbows and halos; mirages; glacial ages. Diurnal apparent movement of the Sun: sunrise, noon and sunset. Recognition of the four cardinal points: north, south, east, and west. Nightly apparent movement of the celestial sphere with its main features regarded as "fixed": stars, the brightest of them forming casual groupings known as constellations, under different names and shapes in many cultures. Different constellations are viewed in different seasons and latitudes. Along with the faint strip of the Milky Way, they altogether conform the idea of the firmament, which as viewed from Earth it seems to be a consistent, solid unit rotating smooth and uniformly. This leads to the intuitive idea of a geocentric universe. Presence of the Moon, with its phases. Tides. Recognition of meteorological phenomena as sub-lunar. Yearly apparent transit of the Sun through the constellations of the zodiac. Recognition of the lunar cycle as a (lunar) month, and the solar cycle as the (solar) year, the basis for calendars. Observation of non-fixed or "wandering" objects in the night sky: the five classical planets; shooting stars and meteor showers; bolides; comets; auroras; zodiacal light. Solar and lunar eclipses. Planetary conjunctions. Identification of the frigid, temperate and torrid zones of the Earth by latitude. Equator and Tropics. Four seasons in temperate zones: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Equinoxes and solstices. Monsoons. Midnight sun. Telluric phenomena: seismic (earthquakes and seaquakes; tsunamis). Geysers. Volcanoes.
Along with an indeterminate number of unregistered sightings of rare events: meteor impacts; novae and supernovae.
Antiquity
2nd millennium BCE – Earliest possible date for the composition of the Babylonian Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, a 7th-century BC copy of a list of observations of the motions of the planet Venus, and the oldest planetary table currently known. 2nd millennium BCE – Babylonian astronomers identify the inner planets Mercury and Venus and the outer planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, which would remain the only known planets until the invention of the telescope in early modern times. Late 2nd millennium BCE – Chinese astronomers record a solar eclipse during the reign of Zhong Kang, described as part of the document Punitive Expedition of Yin in the Book of Documents. Late 2nd millennium BCE – Chinese established their timing cycle of 12 Earthly Branches based on the approximate number of years (11.86) it takes Jupiter to complete a single revolution in the sky. 1200 BCE – Earliest Babylonian star catalogues. 1100 BCE – Chinese first determine the spring equinox. 750 BCE – During the reign of Nabonassar (747–733 BC), the systematic records of ominous phenomena in Babylonian astronomical diaries that began at this time allowed for the discovery of a repeating 18-year cycle of lunar eclipses. 776 BCE – Chinese make the earliest reliable record of a solar eclipse. 687 BCE – Chinese make earliest known record of meteor shower. 7th century BCE – Egyptian astronomers alleged to have predicted a solar eclipse. 613 BCE – A comet, possibly Comet Halley, is recorded in Spring and Autumn Annals by the Chinese. 586 BCE – Thales of Miletus alleged to have predicted a solar eclipse. 560 BCE – Anaximander posits a mechanical model of the world: a cylindrical Earth"A column of stone", Aetius reports in De Fide (III, 7, 1), or "similar to a pillar-shaped stone", pseudo-Plutarch (III, 10). floats freely in space surrounded by three concentric wheels turning at different distances: the closest for the stars and planets, the second for the Moon and the farthest for the Sun, all conceived not as bodies but as "fire seen thru holes" in every wheel.Most of Anaximander's model of the Universe comes from pseudo-Plutarch (II, 20–28): "[The Sun] is a circle twenty-eight times as big as the Earth, with the outline similar to that of a fire-filled chariot wheel, on which appears a mouth in certain places and through which it exposes its fire, as through the hole on a flute. [...] the Sun is equal to the Earth, but the circle on which it breathes and on which it's borne is twenty-seven times as big as the whole earth. [...] [The eclipse] is when the mouth from which comes the fire heat is closed. [...] [The Moon] is a circle nineteen times as big as the whole earth, all filled with fire, like that of the Sun". But he starts to feed the idea of celestial mechanics as different of the notion of planets being heavenly deities, leaving mythology aside. 475 BCE – Parmenides is credited to be the first Greek who declared that the Earth is spherical and is situated in the centre of the universe, believed to have been the first to detect the identity of Hesperus, the evening-star, and Phosphorus, the morning-star (Venus), and by some, the first to claim that moonlight is a reflection of sunlight. 450 BCE – Anaxagoras shows that the Moon shines by reflected sunlight: the phases of the Moon are caused by the illumination of its sphere by the Sun in different angles along the lunar month. He was also the first to give a correct explanation of eclipses, by asserting that the Moon is rocky, thus opaque, and closer to the Earth than the Sun. 400 BCE – Philolaus and other Pythagoreans propose a model in which the Earth and the Sun revolve around an invisible "Central Fire" (not the Sun), and the Moon and the planets orbit the Earth. Due to philosophical concerns about the number 10, they also added a tenth "hidden body" or Counter-Earth (Antichthon), always in the opposite side of the invisible Central Fire and therefore also invisible from Earth. 360 BCE – Plato claims in his Timaeus that circles and spheres are the preferred shape of the universe and that the Earth is at the centre. These circles are the orbits of the heavenly bodies, varying in size for every of them. He arranged these celestial orbs, in increasing order from the Earth: Moon, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars located on the celestial sphere forming the outermost shell. 360 BCE – Eudoxus of Cnidus proposes for first time a purely geometric-mathematical, geocentric model of the planetary movements, including that of the Sun and the Moon."Eudoxus of Cnidus." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 4. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 465–467. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 June 2014. 350 BCE – Aristotle argues for a spherical Earth using lunar eclipsesDe caelo, 297b31–298a10 and other observations. Also, he asserts his conception of the heavenly spheres,Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, p. 440. and of an outer space fulfilled with aether. 330 BCE – Heraclides Ponticus is said to be the first Greek who proposes that the Earth rotates on its axis, from west to east, once every 24 hours, contradicting Aristotle's teachings. Simplicius says that Heraclides proposed that the irregular movements of the planets can be explained if the Earth moves while the Sun stays still, but these statements are disputed. 280 BCE – Aristarchus of Samos offers the first definite discussion of the possibility of a heliocentric cosmos, and uses the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon to estimate the Moon's orbital radius at 60 Earth radii, and its physical radius as one-third that of the Earth. He also makes an inaccurate attempt to measure the distance to the Sun. 250 BCE – Following the heliocentric ideas of Aristarcus, Archimedes in his work The Sand Reckoner computes the diameter of the universe centered around the Sun to be about 1014 stadia (in modern units, about 2 light years, , ).Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner 511 R U, by Ilan Vardi, accessed 28-II-2007. 210 BCE – Apollonius of Perga shows the equivalence of two descriptions of the apparent retrograde planet motions (assuming the geocentric model), one using eccentrics and another deferent and epicycles.Carrol, Bradley and Ostlie, Dale, An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics, 2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, San Francisco, 2007. p. 4 200 BCE – Eratosthenes determines that the radius of the Earth is roughly . 150 BCE – According to Strabo (1.1.9), Seleucus of Seleucia is the first to state that the tides are due to the attraction of the Moon, and that the height of the tides depends on the Moon's position relative to the Sun. 150 BCE – Hipparchus uses parallax to determine that the distance to the Moon is roughly .G. J. Toomer, "Hipparchus on the distances of the sun and moon," Archive for History of Exact Sciences 14 (1974), 126–142. 134 BCE – Hipparchus discovers the precession of the equinoxes.Alexander Jones "Ptolemy in Perspective: Use and Criticism of his Work from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Springer, 2010, p. 36. 87 BCE – The Antikythera mechanism, the earliest known computer, is built. It is an extremely complex astronomical computer designed to predict solar and lunar eclipses accurately and track the movements of the planets and the Sun. It could also calculate the differences in the apsidial and axial precession of heavenly bodies with extreme degree of accuracy. 28 BCE – Chinese history book Book of Han makes earliest known dated record of sunspot. 150 CE – Claudius Ptolemy completes his work Almagest, that codifies the astronomical knowledge of his time and cements the geocentric model in the West, and it remained the most authoritative text on astronomy for more than 1,500 years. The Almagest put forward extremely complex and accurate methods to determine the position and structure of planets, stars (including some objects as nebulae, supernovas and galaxies then regarded as stars also) and heavenly bodies. It includes a catalogue of 1,022 stars (largely based on a previous one by Hipparchus of about 850 entries) and a large amount of constellations, comets and other astronomical phenomena. Following a long astrological tradition, he arranged the heavenly spheres ordering them (from Earth outward): Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and fixed stars.