Abstract
Celestial timekeeping relied in the first instance on the movements of the stars and planets. The principal systematic positions of planets are recorded in ephemerides, which are primarily predictions, not observations. Prior to the invention of printing, ephemerides are extremely rare, which gives lie to the widespread mythology that astronomers before the days of printing were eagerly observing the heavens to add epicycles to improve the accuracy of the tables.
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References
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance in the early part of this essay from Richard Kremer, Alexander Jones, and Johannes Thomann.
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Gingerich, O. (2017). The Role of Ephemerides from Ptolemy to Kepler. In: Arias, E., Combrinck, L., Gabor, P., Hohenkerk, C., Seidelmann, P. (eds) The Science of Time 2016. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59909-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59909-0_3
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