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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": [26] 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 ...
Al-Juzjani even proposed a solution to the problem. In al-Andalus, the anonymous work al-Istidrak ala Batlamyus (meaning "Recapitulation regarding Ptolemy"), included a list of objections to the Ptolemic astronomy. One of the most important works in the period was Al-Shukuk ala Batlamyus ("Doubts on Ptolemy"). In this, the author summed up the ...
According to one school of thought in the history of astronomy, minor imperfections in the original Ptolemaic system were discovered through observations accumulated over time. It was mistakenly believed that more levels of epicycles (circles within circles) were added to the models to match more accurately the observed planetary motions.
The Revival of Planetary Astronomy in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Vol. CS 279. Ashgate. ISBN 0-86078-868-7. Hodson, F. R., ed. (1974). The Place of Astronomy in the Ancient World: A Joint Symposium of the Royal Society and the British Academy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-725944-8.
Ptolemy attempted to resolve the Planetary motion dilemma in which the observations were not consistent with the perfect circular orbits of the bodies. Ptolemy adopted the Apollonius' epicycles as solution. [48] Ptolemy emphasised that the epicycle motion does not apply to the Sun. His main contribution to the model was the equant points. He ...
Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia. The numeral system used, sexagesimal , was based on sixty, as opposed to ten in the modern decimal system .
The basic elements of Ptolemaic astronomy, showing a planet on an epicycle (smaller dashed circle), a deferent (larger dashed circle), the eccentric (×) and an equant (•). Equant (or punctum aequans) is a mathematical concept developed by Claudius Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD to account for the observed motion of the planets. The equant is ...
Newton claimed that Ptolemy had predominantly obtained the astronomical results described in his work The Almagest by computation, and not by the direct observations that Ptolemy described. Distrust of Ptolemy's observations goes back at least as far as doubts raised in the 16th century by Tycho Brahe and in the 18th century by Delambre. R. R.