A Short History of Astronomy

§§ 27-30. _Aristotle_: his spheres: the phases of the moon: proofs that the earth is spherical: his arguments against the motion of the earth: relative distances of the celestia...

§ 68. _Purbach_ and _Regiomontanus_: influence of the original Greek authors: the Nürnberg school: _Walther_: employment of printing: conflict between the views of Aristotle and...

§§ 76-9. The =De Revolutionibus=. _The first book_: the postulates: the principle of _relative motion_, with applications to the apparent annual motion of the sun, and to the da...

§ 138. Appointment by the Emperor Rudolph as successor to Tycho: writings on the new star of 1604 and on Optics: theory of refraction and a new form of telescope 182

§ 192. Third period of Newton’s life, 1687-1727: Parliamentary career: improvement of the lunar theory: appointments at the Mint and removal to London: publication of the _Optic...

§ 258. The distribution of the stars in space: _star-gauging_: the “grindstone” theory of the universe: defects of the fundamental assumption: its partial withdrawal. Employment...

§§ 281-4. The distance of the sun: transits of Venus: observations of Mars and of the minor planets in opposition: _diurnal method_: gravitational methods, lunar and planetary:...

“The never-wearied Sun, the Moon exactly round, And all those Stars with which the brows of ample heaven are crowned, Orion, all the Pleiades, and those seven Atlas got, The clo...

19. In the earlier period of Greek history one of the chief functions expected of astronomers was the proper regulation of the calendar. The Greeks, like earlier nations, began...

55. About fourteen centuries elapsed between the publication of the _Almagest_ and the death of Coppernicus (1543), a date which is in astronomy a convenient landmark on the bou...

“But in this our age, one rare witte (seeing the continuall errors that from time to time more and more continually have been discovered, besides the infinite absurdities in the...

of motion, but that Venus and Mercury revolve round the sun, he found to be an old Egyptian belief, supported also by _Martianus Capella_, who wrote a compendium of science and...

“Preposterous wits that cannot row at ease On the smooth channel of our common seas; And such are those, in my conceit at least, Those clerks that think—think how absurd a jest!...

113. To the generation which succeeded Tycho belonged two of the best known of all astronomers, Galilei and Kepler. Although they were nearly contemporaries, Galilei having been...

“His celebrated laws were the outcome of a lifetime of speculation, for the most part vain and groundless.... But Kepler’s name was destined to be immortal, on account of the pa...

152. Between the publication of Galilei’s _Two New Sciences_ (1638) and that of Newton’s _Principia_ (1687) a period of not quite half a century elapsed; during this interval no...

Using a still finer telescope, and aided by his acuteness in interpreting his observations, Huygens made the much more interesting discovery that the puzzling appearances seen r...

164. Newton’s life may be conveniently divided into three portions. First came 22 years (1643-1665) of boyhood and undergraduate life; then followed his great productive period,...

196. Newton virtually created a new department of astronomy, =gravitational astronomy=, as it is often called, and bequeathed to his successors the problem of deducing more full...

“Astronomy, considered in the most general way, is a great problem of mechanics, the arbitrary data of which are the elements of the celestial movements; its solution depends bo...

attempt to explain it on this basis which, though still unsuccessful, represented the observations better than Euler’s work. Laplace in his first paper on secular inequalities (...

251. _Frederick William Herschel_ was born at Hanover on November 15th, 1738, two years after Lagrange and nine years before Laplace. His father was a musician in the Hanoverian...

regarded as variable stars, the times of greatest brightness occurring quite irregularly or at long intervals. Moreover various records of the brightness of stars by earlier ast...

272. The last three chapters have contained some account of progress made in three branches of astronomy which, though they overlap and exercise an important influence on one an...

[8] It may be noted that our word “day” (and the corresponding word in other languages) is commonly used in two senses, either for the time between sunrise and sunset (day as di...

[17] The =poles= of a great circle on a sphere are the ends of a diameter perpendicular to the plane of the great circle. Every point on the great circle is at the same distance...