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Updated: May 17, 2025
But what had the Syene shadows to do with that? Syene must be under that ecliptic. On the edge of it. In short, just under the tropic. Now he had ascertained exactly the latitude of one place on the earth's surface. He had his known point from whence to start on a world-journey, and he would use it; he would calculate the circumference of the earth and he did it.
Gauss published an approximate ephemeris of probable positions when the planet should emerge from the sun's light. The mean distance from the sun was found to be 2.767, agreeing with the 2.8 given by Bode's law. Its orbit was found to be inclined over 10 degrees to the ecliptic, and its diameter was only 161 miles.
Pythagoras taught the obliquity of the ecliptic, probably learned in Egypt, and the identity of the morning and evening stars. It is supposed that he maintained that the sun was the centre of the universe, and that the earth revolved around it; but this he did not demonstrate, and his whole system was unscientific, assuming certain arbitrary principles, from which he reasoned deductively.
As to character, he is bold and resolute, desirous of praise, of slow speech and composed judgment; outwardly decorous, but privately not altogether virtuous. The sun, in fact, according to astrologers, is the natural significator of respectability; for which I can discover no reason, unless it be that the sun travelling always in the ecliptic has no latitude, and so solar folk are allowed none.
Here he continued nearly a year, during which he composed and transmitted to his friend Zehentmaier, at Tubingen, several small treatises, "On the Magnet," "On the cause of the Obliquity of the Ecliptic," and "On the Divine Wisdom, as shewn in the Creation" all of which seem to have been lost.
The Zodiacal Light, on the other hand, is plain enough, provided that the time and the circumstances of the observation are properly chosen. In the attempts to explain the Zodiacal Light, the favorite hypothesis has been that it is an appendage of the sun perhaps simply an extension of the corona in the plane of the ecliptic, which is not very far from coinciding with that of the sun's equator.
We all meet together and wait. "What is the cause of the eclipse?" asks Mashenka. I reply: "A solar eclipse occurs when the moon, moving in the plane of the ecliptic, crosses the line joining the centres of the sun and the earth." "And what does the ecliptic mean?" I explain. Mashenka listens attentively.
Some have maintained that the obelisks which the Egyptians erected served the purpose of gnomons for determining the obliquity of the ecliptic, the altitude of the pole, and the length of the tropical year. It is thought even that the Pyramids, by the position of their sides toward the cardinal points, attest Egyptian acquaintance with a meridional line.
In this way it has been found that the inclination of the plane is 1° 35' 31", and that the longitude of the ascending node is 102° 57' 30". The position of the plane when calculated for the year 1950, with respect to the ecliptic of 1750, gives 1° 35' 31" for the inclination, and 102° 57' 15" for the longitude of the ascending node.
Speculations of this kind became more and more frequent, and Lieutenant Procope pointed out that the danger incurred might be of a fourfold character: first, that the comet, being irresistibly attracted, might be drawn on to the very surface of the planet, and there annihilated; secondly, that as the result of being brought under that attraction, it might be transformed into a satellite, or even a sub-satellite, of that mighty world; thirdly, that it might be diverted into a new orbit, which would never be coincident with the ecliptic; or, lastly, its course might be so retarded that it would only reach the ecliptic too late to permit any junction with the earth.
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