Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Lectures 5-6
Course website: www.scs.fsu.edu/~dduke/lectures
Lectures 5-6
• Almagest Books 9–13
• geocentric vs. heliocentric point of view
• the wandering stars, or planets
• the two anomalies
• the eccentric plus epicycle and its problems
• the equant
• latitude
• distances
• the background
In reality the Earth and all the other planets revolve around the Sun.
Nevertheless, we can imagine a reference frame in which the Earth is
at rest, and ask “what would a correct theory look like in that reference
frame?”
Answer: it would look very much like the theory created by the Greek
astronomers.
And note: modern astronomers compute first the planets orbiting the
Sun, and then have to figure out the position of the planet relative to
the Earth.
Problems for heliocentric theory:
3.
P2 =1 for each planet
a3
Instead of the Earth circling the Sun, we would have the Sun
circling the Earth.
http://www.csit.fsu.edu/~dduke/venhelio.html
http://www.csit.fsu.edu/~dduke/juphelio.html
All of the planets have, from time to time, a retrograde
motion, i.e. the slow motion from west to east stops,
then reverses into an easy to west motion, then stops
again and resumes a west to east motion.
http://www.astronomynotes.com/nakedeye/animations/retrograde-anim.htm
In reality this happens because planets closer to the Sun
move faster than planets farther from the Sun.
modern Almagest
planet a r r
Mercury 0.3871 23;14 22;30
Venus 0.7233 43;24 43;10
Mars 1.5237 39;22 39;30
Jupiter 5.2028 11;32 11;30
Saturn 9.5388 6;17 6;30
www.scs.fsu.edu/~dduke/kepler.html
http://people.scs.fsu.edu/~dduke/kepler3.html
a a3 Period P2 P2/a3
Mercury 0.38 0.05 0.24 0.06 1.10
Venus 0.72 0.37 0.62 0.38 1.02
Earth 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00
Mars 1.52 3.50 1.88 3.54 1.01
Jupiter 5.22 142.02 11.83 140.03 0.99
Saturn 9.23 786.53 29.50 870.25 1.11
So the Almagest models are indeed very much like the real
planetary orbits when viewed from Earth.
For some reason Ptolemy
makes the model for
Mercury more complicated.
http://people.scs.fsu.edu/~dduke/mercury.html
Like the Moon, the planet orbits are tilted relative to the Sun’s
orbit.
outer inner
P P
E E
The Indian theories have even longer period relations:
(1) α = λ − λA ν 1 = λ + 2 q(α )
1
Aryabhata’s text says:
-1
-2
500 502 504 506 508 510 512
10
-1.5 0
-5
-10
-2.5 -15
500 502 504 506 508 510 512 500 502 504 506 508 510 512
http://people.scs.fsu.edu/~dduke/arabmars.html