Abstract
Halley’s announcement came at the end of a paper discussing the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria and the inscriptions that had been found there. After outlining the history of the city from Classical sources, Halley made some remarks on the inscriptions, noting, for example, that before A.D. 500 none of the individuals referred to in the inscription had Roman names whereas after that date forenames taken from Roman Emperors such as Julius, Aurelius and Septimus, become common. He then turned to the geography of the region identifying Aleppo, Andrene and Efree with the ancient cities of Berrhæa, Androna and Seriane respectively and stating that Ptolemy and more recently Kepler in the Rudolphine Tables (followed by Bullialdus and others) gave incorrect latitudes and longitudes for these cities. More importantly, Halley said, he had identified the ancient city of Aracta with the city now known as Racca (al-Raqqa) on the Euphrates. It was in this city that al-Battānī made his observations. If an accurate latitude and longitude for this city were known, Halley said, it would be possible to use al-Battānī’s observations to resolve the question of whether there has been any change in the axis of the Earth’s rotation and to determine the size of the acceleration of the moon’s motion.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Jones (2005). Claims that Ptolemy fudged these observations go back at least to the Renaissance.
- 2.
Ragep (2010).
- 3.
Swerdlow (2010).
- 4.
Wilson (1985).
- 5.
Kepler’s letter was published in Epistolae J. Keppleri et M. Berneggeri mutae, Argentorati (1672), pp. 68–75. The translation quoted is taken from Wilson (1985), p. 36.
- 6.
Wilson (1985), pp. 38–51.
- 7.
Britton (1992), pp. 153–178 provides a useful overview of the history of work on the secular acceleration of the moon.
- 8.
Stephenson and Clark (1978), Steele (2004).
- 9.
Addressing these problems can be quite difficult and sadly is not always done with the care and rigour required—see my comments in Steele (2004). In Steele (2003) I discuss related problems in the context of attempts to establish absolute chronologies using astronomy. For a detailed discussion of how these problems can be successfully addressed, see Stephenson (1997) which includes many examples.
- 10.
Steele (2004), Jones (2006), Steele (2011).
- 11.
A translation and study of Guo Shoujing’s work is given in Sivin (2009).
- 12.
Attwater (1936), pp. 91–101.
- 13.
Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996), p. 124.
- 14.
The Cambridge Chronicle 26 November 1768; see Winstanley (1935), p. 172.
- 15.
MS Museum 95, p. 70.
- 16.
Long, Astronomy, p. 127.
- 17.
Long, Astronomy, p. 371.
- 18.
Long, Astronomy, p. 385.
- 19.
Steele (2012).
- 20.
See Cohen and Whitman (1999), pp. 941–942.
- 21.
Birkett and Oldroyd (1991).
- 22.
On the history of Ptolemy’s royal canon and its use by chronologists, see Depuydt (1995).
- 23.
Grafton (1993) and (2003).
- 24.
My discussion is of necessity brief. For detailed overviews with references to further work, see Wilson (1989a, b), (1995), (2010), pp. 9–30, Forbes and Wilson (1995), Linton (2004), and Morando (1995).
- 25.
Wilson (1989a).
- 26.
Kelly (1991).
- 27.
Plummer (1940–1941).
- 28.
Gaythorpe (1957), Wilson (1987) and (1989a), pp. 197–201.
- 29.
Linton (2004), p. 234.
- 30.
Linton (2004), p. 276, Whiteside (1976), Kollerstrom (2000).
- 31.
Cohen (1975).
- 32.
Linton (2004), p. 277.
- 33.
Waff (1977), Kollerstrom (2000), p. 208.
- 34.
Wilson (1995), p. 91.
- 35.
Wepster (2010).
- 36.
Forbes and Wilson (1995), p. 65.
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Steele, J.M. (2012). Introduction. In: Ancient Astronomical Observations and the Study of the Moon’s Motion (1691-1757). Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2149-8_1
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