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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'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 triquetrum (derived from the Latin tri-["three"] and quetrum ["cornered"]) was the medieval name for an ancient astronomical instrument first described by Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 168) in the Almagest (V. 12). Also known as Parallactic Rulers, it was used for determining altitudes of heavenly bodies.
The Planisphaerium is a work by Ptolemy. The title can be translated as "celestial plane" or "star chart". In this work Ptolemy explored the mathematics of mapping figures inscribed in the celestial sphere onto a plane by what is now known as stereographic projection. This method of projection preserves the properties of circles.
The Canon of Kings was a dated list of kings used by ancient astronomers as a convenient means to date astronomical phenomena, such as eclipses.For a period, the Canon was preserved by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, and is thus known sometimes as Ptolemy's Canon.
The table of chords, created by the Greek astronomer, geometer, and geographer Ptolemy in Egypt during the 2nd century AD, is a trigonometric table in Book I, chapter 11 of Ptolemy's Almagest, [1] a treatise on mathematical astronomy. It is essentially equivalent to a table of values of the sine function.
The angular rate at which the epicycle traveled was not constant unless he measured it from another point which is now called the equant (Ptolemy did not give it a name). It was the angular rate at which the deferent moved around the point midway between the equant and the Earth (the eccentric) that was constant; the epicycle center swept out ...
c. 150 CE – Claudius Ptolemy completes his work Almagest, that codifies the astronomical knowledge of his time and cements the geocentric model in the West, and it remained the most authoritative text on astronomy for more than 1,500 years.