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Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 10/9/2020 & 10/13/2020

NOTE: This post is actually being posted in December since, as I was writing my year end summary, I realized I never posted these observations!

One of the Big Goals of this project is eventually follow Kepler’s methods to be able to derive the orbit of the planets. While I’m still nowhere near being ready for that as I’m still working on the Almagest, I know enough that I know the key observations are those taken when the planets are at opposition. Thus, the quadrant was originally built in time for the 2018 Mars opposition. But Mars only comes to opposition a little over once every two years.

And it’s now time for another opposition. Since I’ve been having some issues with the recently added azimuth ring, I wanted to make sure they were resolved before the opposition. Thus, I went out a few nights before opposition to see if I’d successfully resolved the issues. That night (10/9), I observed $29$ stars plus the three visible planets (Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars). As usual, a few of these observations got tossed, but the overall data looked pretty good. The average right ascension averaged $0.20º$ low and the declination came out $0.16º$ low which is fairly average. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch any new stars as this portion of the sky is pretty well mapped.

Then came the $13^{th}$ which was the important date of opposition. While waiting for Mars to get to a decent altitude, I was able to take observations of $20$ stars that I kept as well as Jupiter and Saturn.

Coming to Mars, I ended up taking $10$ readings in hopes it would average out well. Ultimately, the average for Mars came out with the right ascension being low by $0.11º$ but $0.44º$ low on the declination.

The overall data for the night wasn’t much better, but actually went the other way: The average right ascension was $0.41º$ high and the declination averaged $0.14º$ low.

As usual, the data is available in the Google Sheet.

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Almagest Book V: Second Anomaly Eccentricity

So far, we’ve stated that the effect of the second anomaly is to magnify the first anomaly. In the last chapter, we worked out how much larger. Since this second model works by bringing the moon physically closer and further by offsetting the center of the lunar orbit with an eccentric and having that eccentre orbit the Earth, we can determine how far that center must be. In other words, the eccentricity of this second anomaly. Continue reading “Almagest Book V: Second Anomaly Eccentricity”

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Almagest Book V: Size of the Second Anomaly

So far, what we know about Ptolemy’s second anomaly is that it doesn’t have an effect at conjunction or opposition. Its at its maximum at quadrature, which is to say, a $\frac{1}{4}$ and $\frac{3}{4}$ of the way through each synodic month1. Its effect is to re-enforce whatever anomaly was present from the first anomaly. Ptolemy laid out a conceptual model in Chapter 2, but to determine the parameters of the model, we’ll need to first explore how much this second anomaly impacts things.

Continue reading “Almagest Book V: Size of the Second Anomaly”

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Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 9/18/2020

Last time I went out observing, I met a Will Day, an photographer with quite a bit of experience in astrophotography. He asked if he could photograph Yseult and I as we worked and it ended up with one of the coolest images to come out of this project. But as cool as it was, it didn’t feel quite right since we were using the red headlamps and wearing mundane clothes with the period instrument.

Fortunately, Will was game to try something more planned to really capture the period feel. So Yesult and I went out last month, putting on our best late period garb. The results were beyond what I expected.

If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to do this observing, this is it.  Continue reading “Data: Stellar Quadrant Observations – 9/18/2020”

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Almagest Book V: Model for the Second Anomaly

In the last chapter, we introduced an instrument capable of determining the ecliptic latitude and longitude of an object so long as the position of the true sun or fixed star is known. Using this on the moon, Ptolemy found

that the distance of the moon from the sun was sometimes in agreement with that calculated from the above [Book IV] hypothesis, and sometimes in disagreement, the discrepancy being at some times small and at other times great.

How so? Ptolemy provides details. Continue reading “Almagest Book V: Model for the Second Anomaly”

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Almagest Book V: On the Use of an Astrolabe

Now that Ptolemy has described how to construct an astrolabe, he covers its usage. Specifically, Ptolemy begins when

both sun and moon could be observed above the earth at the same time.

As a brief reminder, what Ptolemy is really discussing here is what was necessary for him to make the observations that revealed the moon’s second anomaly. So what is given here is really in that context. As such, neither the sun nor moon is actually required for use of this instrument. In this case, Ptolemy is using the sun to align the instrument for use, and considering the moon to be the target, hence why the sun and moon are required. But, as we’ll see, a star can be used for alignment and there’s no reason one couldn’t be used as a target either.

Continue reading “Almagest Book V: On the Use of an Astrolabe”

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Almagest Book V: On the Construction of an Astrolabe

Book IV was all about setting up a preliminary lunar model with a single anomaly which Ptolemy modeled using the epicyclic model. But throughout, Ptolemy kept referencing a second anomaly he discovered, without ever saying how. In his introduction to Book V, Ptolemy finally gives the answer:

We were led to awareness of and belief in this [second anomaly] by the observations of lunar positions recorded by Hipparchus, and also by our own observations, which were made by means of an instrument which we constructed for this purpose.

That instrument was, at the time, called an “astrolabe” which simply means “for taking the [position of] stars,”1 but today we would call it an armillary sphere. Ptolemy describes how one should be constructed which is what we’ll be exploring in this post. To help us, here’s the image of one labeled from Toomer’s translation2.

Continue reading “Almagest Book V: On the Construction of an Astrolabe”

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Almagest Book IV: Hipparchus’ Two Values of Lunar Anomaly Second Triad

In the last post, we followed Ptolemy as he reviewed three eclipses Hipparchus used to determine the parameters for his model showing they were different from Ptolemy’s. In this post, we’ll repeat the procedure for the second set of three eclipses, again showing that Hipparchus’ calculations did not match those of Ptolemy.

Continue reading “Almagest Book IV: Hipparchus’ Two Values of Lunar Anomaly Second Triad”

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Almagest Book IV: Table of Lunar Equation of Anomaly (First Anomaly)

Although I don’t see any particular reason we couldn’t have done this several chapters earlier, Ptolemy has elected to hold off producing his table of Lunar Anomaly until almost the very end of Book IV1.

At the end of the previous chapter, he did toss in a few expository notes on this table noting that this will be useful in the future for “calculations concerning conjunctions and oppositions”2. To do so, Ptolemy doesn’t show his math, but notes that it was done “geometrically, in the same way as we already did for the sun.”

However, to use that method requires knowing the ratio of the radius of the deferent to that of the epicycle. Ptolemy states he takes a ratio of $60:5 \frac{1}{4}$. Using that, he calculates his table in the same manner as he did for the sun, which is in $6º$ intervals near apogee and $3º$ intervals near perigee. However, because this epicycle rotates opposite the direction of the deferent, we should subtract if the angle is in the first column, and add if it is in the second3

That being laid out, the table is below: Continue reading “Almagest Book IV: Table of Lunar Equation of Anomaly (First Anomaly)”