The History of Greek Astronomy

This paper explores four of the greatest minds of classic astronomy Apollinarius, Aristarchus of Samos, Ptolemy, and Hipparchus of Nicea. The ancient classics are often referred to as the fathers of ancient astronomy. They developed theories and numeric formulae to describe the wonders of the cosmos, even the word cosmos came from the Greeks. The ancient Greek philosophers refined astronomy from being an observational science into a full-blown theoretical science. This paper will attempt to witness out who actually was more important to the history of astronomy of these four astronomers. Apollinarius was among the most prominent Greek astronomers of the condemnation this exacting preceding Ptolemy and his chief contributions were in lunar theory. Not much(prenominal) of his escape or writings survived or is even know by title although one specimen of Apollinariuss survived. This was a loss of most 500 words quoted in a part of an anonymous commentary on Ptolemys expert Tables, make up in the early third century CE and was maintain in a medieval astrological manuscript. This passage explains about the achievementicities with the Moon, and explains how the moons motion in latitude, reckoned as its maturate in the plane of its orbit relative to the nodal line.

Astrologers of this time period used Apollinariuss tables for computing positions of the Sun and Moon, and that these tables busy the Babylonian convention according to which the vernal equinoctial acid is at the eighth degree in Aries, not the ancestry of the bespeak as Hipparchus and Ptolemy assumed. Apollinarius and Ptol emy were both grouped as astronomers who com! puted ascensional arcs by means of spherical trigonometry rather than the Babylonian arithmetical methods in common use. The second Greek astronomer in this paper is on Aristarchus of Samos who was the first to formulate plain the heliocentric theory by placing the Sun not the undercoat at the center of the known universe (Heath 1913 ). This theory would...If you motive to drag a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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