Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, to gather information about its size and curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers that show with startling directness the large-scale geometry of the universe.

(A) Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, to gather information about its size and curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers

(B) Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth for gathering information about its size and also the curvature of its surface, new observations have been made by astronomers

(C) Similar to the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, where they gathered information about its size and the curvature of its surface, astronomers have made new observations

(D) Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth gathering information about its size and the curvature of its surface, astronomers have made new observations

(E) Just as with the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth, gathering information about its size and curvature of the surface, astronomers have made new observations

How I have analyzed:

A and B => Are out for wrong comparison. Like X, Y, where X and MUST be grammatically parallel.

E=> Just as X, So Y- is the correct idiom. OUT.

C=> X is similar to Y is correct, but Similar can not be used as "like". Where has been used to refer to earth. Wrong.

D=BUT

Like the great navigators who first sailed around the Earth gathering.

=> Verb ing without comma modifies the immediate preceding noun, so gathering modifies earth. Is it right saying that earth is gathering information?

Please clarify.

Thanks.