Hipparchus' coordinate system

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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History Of Astronomy, Coordinate Systems

Scientific paper

In his "Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne" Delambre concludes unequivocally that Hipparchus knew and used a definite system of celestial spherical coordinates, namely the right ascension and declination system that we use today. The basis of Delambre's conclusion was disarmingly simple: he pointed out that in the "Commentary to Aratus" Hipparchus actually quotes the positions of numerous stars directly in right ascension and declination (or more often its complement, polar distance). Nearly two centuries later, in his "A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy", Neugebauer not only completely ignores Delambre's conclusion on this issue, but goes further to propose his own, as we shall see quite fanciful, theory that begins "From the Commentary to Aratus, it is quite obvious that at Hipparchus' time a definite system of spherical coordinates for stellar positions did not yet exist." and concludes "...nowhere in Greek astronomy before the catalogue of stars in the Almagest is it attested that orthogonal spherical coordinates are used to determine stellar positions." Today it is clear that Neugebauer's theory is conventionally accepted. It is the purpose of this paper to offer fresh arguments that Delambre was correct.

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