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Updated: May 17, 2025
The Almagest commences with the doctrine that the earth is globular and fixed in space; it describes the construction of a table of chords and instruments for observing the solstices, and deduces the obliquity of the ecliptic.
In general, the Babylonians were more interested in religion and worship, than the Assyrians. The former erected temples; the latter, palaces. The attainments of the early Babylonians in mathematics and astronomy were far beyond those of the Egyptians. They divided the year into twelve months, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac.
The most wonderful thing about it is the inclination of its orbit thirty-five degrees to the plane of the ecliptic; which means that at each revolution in its orbit, it swings that much above and below the imaginary plane cutting the sun at its equator, from which the earth and other larger planets vary but little.
On comparing his star positions with those of Timocharis and Aristillus he found no stars that had appeared or disappeared in the interval of 150 years; but he found that all the stars seemed to have changed their places with reference to that point in the heavens where the ecliptic is 90 degrees from the poles of the earth i.e., the equinox.
The 'Ecliptic' was carrying coals from Newcastle. The time was midnight, the sky was misty, and the gale was from the south-east, when the watch reported a light ahead. The cabin boy was standing on deck near the captain, when he held a consultation with his mate, who was also his son.
This will be readily understood, when we state that the disturbing action of the sun and moon upon the terrestrial spheroid produces an oscillation of the earth's axis which occasions a periodic variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic.
They ascertained, as we have seen, the size of the earth by the measurement of a degree on her surface, determined the obliquity of the ecliptic, published corrected tables of the sun and moon fixed the length of the year, verified the precession of the equinoxes.
At present it happens to lie near the Pole Star, but it will not always remain there. It describes a circle around the pole of the Ecliptic, requiring about 25,000 years for a complete circuit.
The philosopher reports, in moving the question, Wherefore it is that the sea-water is salt, that at the time when Phoebus gave the government of his resplendent chariot to his son Phaeton, the said Phaeton, unskilful in the art, and not knowing how to keep the ecliptic line betwixt the two tropics of the latitude of the sun's course, strayed out of his way, and came so near the earth that he dried up all the countries that were under it, burning a great part of the heavens which the philosophers call Via lactea, and the huffsnuffs St.
It connects, casually and quantitatively, the periods of the moon's revolution and of the earth's rotation, the obliquity of the ecliptic, the inclination and eccentricity of the lunar orbit. All this can scarcely be accidental. Professor Darwin's first researches on this subject were communicated to the Royal Society, December 18, 1879.
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