In the textbook, which is based on the course of lectures read at the Faculty of Physics of Moscow State University, the rich factual material traces the development of basic human ideas about the Universe. The long stages of the quantitative accumulation of new astronomical data and the era of revolutionary transformations of the astronomical picture of the world are covered. In detail are considered the astronomy of ancient civilizations (Double Rivers, Egypt, China, India, Ancient Greece, Central America), the era of Hellenism, the Middle Ages, the great Copernican revolution in astronomy, the development of astronomy under the sign of the dominance of the Newtonian gravitational picture of the world. The exposition covers the second revolution in astronomy in the 1920s. XX in . and brought to the modern period, when there are signs of a new revolution in the astronomical picture of the world