I'm writing a science fiction short story which involves a group of people being in suspended animation for a very long period of time, on the order of thousands of years.
My question is, would an astronomer on waking be able to determine that a significant period of time has passed purely by making observations in the night sky? How accurate would they be?
For the purposes of the story, I'm more interested in what an astronomer could observe unaided or with a primitive telescope of the sort Galileo might have had early in his career (around 3X magnification).
Thanks!