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For the Moon, Ptolemy began with Hipparchus' epicycle-on-deferent, then added a device that historians of astronomy refer to as a "crank mechanism": [28] he succeeded in creating models for the other planets, where Hipparchus had failed, by introducing a third device called the equant. Ptolemy wrote the Syntaxis as a textbook of mathematical ...
Ptolemy states that having dealt with the former subject (astronomy) in its own treatise, he "shall now give an account of the second and less self-sufficient method in a properly philosophical way, so that one whose aim is the truth might never compare its perceptions with the sureness of the first". [27]
Ptolemy's Handy Tables (Ancient Greek: πρόχειροι κανόνες, romanized: Procheiroi kanones) is a collection of astronomical tables that second century astronomer Ptolemy created after finishing the Almagest. The Handy Tables elaborated the astronomical tables of the Almagest and included usage instructions, but left out the ...
The book was thoroughly illustrated along with observations and descriptions of the stars, their positions (copied from Ptolemy's Almagest with the longitudes increased by 12° 42' to account for the precession), their magnitudes (brightness) and their color. Notably, al-Sufi improved upon Ptolemy's system for measuring star brightness.
Al-Battānī's Kitāb az-Zīj (كتاب الضد or الضد البتاني, "Book of Astronomical Tables"), written in around 900, and also known as the al-Zīj al-Ṣābī (كتاب الزيج الصابئ), [2] is the earliest extant zīj made in the Ptolemaic tradition that is hardly influenced by Hindu or Sasanian–Iranian astronomy. [8]
It originally consisted of 5 books, of which books 1–3 and the beginning of book 4 are extant. It describes how to use Ptolemy's tables and gives details on the reasoning behind the calculations. [1] Little Commentary on Ptolemy's Handy Tables. This work survives complete. It consists of one book and is intended as a primer for students. [1]
Ptolemy's Almagest (originally titled The Mathematical Syntaxis) is one of the most influential books in the history of Western astronomy. In this book, Ptolemy explained how to predict the behavior of the planets with the introduction of a new mathematical idea, the equant .
Book 2 provides the basic results that one can arrive at with a spherical astronomy. Book 3 provides a theory of the sun. Book 4 provides an equivalent treatment for the moon. Book 5 deals with the new complications that arise from applying Ptolemy's theory to the moon, as opposed to the simpler case of the sun.