Definition:Epicycle (Ptolemaic Astronomy)/Historical Note
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Historical Note on Epicycle (Ptolemaic Astronomy)
Claudius Ptolemy's Almagest modelled the orbits of the planets of the solar system as a system of epicycles.
They modelled the actual behaviour of the planets to a high degree of accuracy.
However, when the heliocentric model of the solar system was proposed, it was realised that the latter model was considerably simpler.
Sources
- 1989: Ephraim J. Borowski and Jonathan M. Borwein: Dictionary of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): epicycle: 2. (Ptolemaic astronomy)
- 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $5$: Eternal Triangles: Base ten logarithms