Tracing the history of medieval astronomy
In this next chapter, we’ll be looking at the angle between the ecliptic and horizon. Obviously, this one will depend on the latitude so there will be more complexity than the previous chapter. But as with before, we’ll simplify the process by starting off with some symmetries.
Continue reading “Almagest Book II: Angle Between Ecliptic And Horizon – Symmetries”
Now that we’ve gotten a few symmetry rules developed, we can return to the main objective of calculating the angle between the ecliptic and meridian at different points along the ecliptic. Specifically, Ptolemy sets out to do this at the first point in every sign. But thanks to the previously derived symmetries, we’ll save ourselves a bit of work.
First Ptolemy does some very short proofs for these angles at the meridian and solstice, and then a slightly more complex one for the signs between them.
Continue reading “Almagest Book II: Angle Between Ecliptic and Meridian – Angle Calculations”
In my last post, I mentioned that entered a paper based on the rising sign calculations presented in this post into an A&S competition. This was a very interesting piece to do because it showed how well woven the roots are, as doing so made use of almost every section we’ve gone through previously. As such, it felt like a good capstone for book II. But it doesn’t end there.
Rather, Ptolemy decides to go on for several more chapters as this book is focused on the great circles on the celestial sphere. While we’ve covered the ecliptic and celestial equator pretty extensively, we have done less with the horizon and meridian which is where Ptolemy seeks to go for the last few chapters in this book. Specifically, we’ll be covering:
All followed by another summary chapter at various latitudes. As the title of this post may have indicated, we’ll be covering the first of these in this post1. Continue reading “Almagest Book II: Angle Between Ecliptic and Meridian – Symmetries”
Although I only briefly mentioned it in this post, this past summer I’d taken the quadrant to Queen’s Prize which is Calontir’s novice level A&S competition held once during each reign. One of the challenges I faced was that the quadrant didn’t entirely fit in any of the categories. While it was designed to function like a period instrument, it was built using decidedly modern methods, and the goal of the quadrant wasn’t the instrument itself, but the measurements it could take. So the overall reaction from the judges was “super cool, but it’s hard to judge on its own merits.”
Thus, it was suggested that a more appropriate format for me might be a research paper. As the measurements from the quadrant1 is still a project in process, I knew I would need to do a paper on something else. While I was sorely tempted to simply print out all of my Almagest posts as one massive paper, I was inspired when writing this post on applications of the rising time tables. In particular, a member of my Barony, Padraigin, is interested in medieval astrology which makes use of rising signs; something that Ptolemy describes how to calculate. However, based on the work done thus far, it was only simple to do for latitudes given in the rising time tables. My goal was to try to condense the methodology for computing a rising time table at any latitude into a relatively short paper.
Despite losing a full night of observing, the quadrant was an easy fix.
The hope was that this would be another triumphant post, with a list of all the stars that Padraig and I got last night. Instead, I’m sad to say that the quadrant is temporarily out of commission.
Continue reading “Stellar Quadrant Observations – 2/2/19 – Quadrant Broken”