Tracing the history of medieval astronomy
With our corrections for the intervals from Saturn’s oppositions in hand, we’re ready to repeat the calculation. As with before, I’m doing this in a Google Sheet to speed things along. This means that I’ll be using modern trig and that the figures I give her may be subject to some rounding as we go since the Sheet is saving higher precision behind the curtain.
We’ll begin with the same diagram as before:
Continue reading “Almagest Book XI: Second Iteration for Saturn”
Next, we’ll work on the correction for the second opposition in our second iteration. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: Second Iteration Correction for Equant – Second Opposition”
Now it’s time to determine the small angles that get applied as corrections. As with before, we’ll start with the first opposition, again using the same diagram. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: Second Iteration Correction for Equant – First Opposition”
Continuing on with our second iteration in which we calculate the revised line of apsides and eccentricity of Mars’ model.
As with before, I’m doing my calculations in a Google Sheet to make it easier to correct should I make an error. This also means that the Sheet will be keeping much higher precision to prevent rounding errors. However, as I’m only showing rounded values, things may look a bit off. So if something seems funny, I encourage checking out the aforementioned Sheet. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: Second Iteration for Mars – Part 2”
Chapter $7$ of Book X has been a lengthy one. We already have six posts behind us and we’re really just getting started because now we have to repeat all of those posts again, iterating through to better approximate an angle we didn’t know at the outset.
To do a quick review, in the first post in this chapter, we needed $\angle ZNH$, the apparent change along the equant circle from the point of view of the observer in the diagram below.
However, what we had was $\angle LNG$ which was the apparent change along the ecliptic from the point of view of the observer.
As you can tell, they’re close, but not quite the same. However, we could get to what we needed from what we had by subtracting $\angle LNT$ and $\angle YNM$.
We found both of these angles to be $0;33º$ in this post and $0;50º$ in this post, respectively.
Unfortunately, both of those values were calculated starting from an incorrect value for $\angle ZNH$. But, the good news is that applying them anyway will (Ptolemy hopes) still get us closer to the correct value! And then we’ll be able to iterate through again to reduce the discrepancy even further.
So let’s get started. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: Second Iteration for Mars – Part 1”
In the last post, we began the process of determining Mars’ eccentricity and the position of apogee. The technique is fundamentally similar to the three eclipse method used for the moon, but the presence of the equant is throwing a wrench in things.
Specifically, right at the beginning of the last post we had to make an assumption about $\angle BDG$ that we know was incorrect. We’re not quite ready to address that, but for now we’ll work on finishing finding the line of apsides as well as the eccentricity as if that assumption were correct. Then, in future posts, we’ll go about trying to iteratively correct that assumption. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: Preliminary determination of Mars’ Apogee & Eccentricity – Part 2”
Now that we’ve laid out what we’re going to be attempting to do, let’s get started on finding the line of apsides and eccentricity. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: First Iteration of Mars’ Apogee & Eccentricity – Part 1”
Now that we’ve sorted out the size of the epicycle, Ptolemy next step will be to determine the point about which the eccentre rotates as he doesn’t want to assume it rotates about the center of the eccentre1. Continue reading “Almagest Book X: The Equant of Venus”
Having thoroughly discussed what anomalies Ptolemy wants his model to account for as well as what hypotheses2 he intends to use for each, Ptolemy is ready to start laying out the basic models. Ultimately, there will be two models. One for the four planets other than Mercury, and a special one for Mercury.
In this post, we’ll explore the first of these models. Continue reading “Almagest Book IX: Model for Planets Other than Mercury”