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In Greek antiquity the ideas of celestial spheres and rings first appeared in the cosmology of Anaximander in the early 6th century BC. [7] In his cosmology both the Sun and Moon are circular open vents in tubular rings of fire enclosed in tubes of condensed air; these rings constitute the rims of rotating chariot-like wheels pivoting on the Earth at their centre.
The ancient Greeks assumed the literal truth of stars attached to a celestial sphere, revolving about the Earth in one day, and a fixed Earth. [9] The Eudoxan planetary model , on which the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic models were based, was the first geometric explanation for the "wandering" of the classical planets . [ 10 ]
The spheres thus moved with a "natural nonviolent motion". [33] The mover's power diminished with increasing distance from the periphery so that the lower spheres lagged behind in their daily motion around the Earth; this power reached even as far as the sphere of water, producing the tides. [34] [35]
Dynamics of the celestial spheres concerns pre-Newtonian explanations of the causes of the motions of the stars and planets. Dynamical time scale; Ephemeris is a compilation of positions of naturally occurring astronomical objects as well as artificial satellites in the sky at a given time or times. Gravitation
This imposed a minimum radius for the sphere of fixed stars at center-to-center Earth to Moon distance plus the Moon's radius (approx. 1/3 Earth radius), plus the width of the Sun (it being, at least, the same that the Moon), plus the indeterminate thickness of the planets' spheres (believed to be thin, anyway), for a total about 386,400 km ...
Obliquity of the ecliptic is the term used by astronomers for the inclination of Earth's equator with respect to the ecliptic, or of Earth's rotation axis to a perpendicular to the ecliptic. It is about 23.4° and is currently decreasing 0.013 degrees (47 arcseconds) per hundred years because of planetary perturbations.
The stars viewed from Earth are seen to proceed from east to west daily (at about 15 degrees per hour), due to the Earth's diurnal motion, and yearly (at about 1 degree per day), due to the Earth's revolution around the Sun. At the same time the stars can be observed to anticipate slightly such motion, at the rate of approximately 50 arc ...
The cosmological model of concentric (or homocentric) spheres, developed by Eudoxus, Callippus, and Aristotle, employed celestial spheres all centered on the Earth. [1] [2] In this respect, it differed from the epicyclic and eccentric models with multiple centers, which were used by Ptolemy and other mathematical astronomers until the time of Copernicus.