Before diving into the star catalog itself, there’s quite a bit I want to say about it. But if you don’t want to wait, here’s a link to the Google Sheet where I’ve transcribed it. More information is below the fold. Continue reading “Almagest Book VII – VIII: The Star Catalog”
Scholarly History of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog Index
The discussion surrounding Ptolemy’s star catalog is a fascinating one. While astronomers for hundreds of years took Ptolemy’s catalog as authoritative, Tycho Brahe noticed that the positions of the stars had a $\approx 1ยบ$ error in longitude. To explain this, Brahe hypothesized that this was due to Ptolemy stealing the data for the star catalog from Hipparchus and updating the longitudes with an incorrect constant of precession.
Astronomers have been debating this ever since.
Continue reading “Scholarly History of Ptolemy’s Star Catalog Index”
Class Materials
This post a collection of my class materials which will be posted below the fold. In general, this is a Powerpoint presentation and the script I follow is included in the file. Continue reading “Class Materials”