Ptolemy authored the Almagest with a 1,000‑star catalog
Question asked:
“Ptolemy wrote the Almagest, a book about astronomy that included a catalog of around 1,000 stars.”
Summary
Ptolemy is the author of the Almagest, an astronomical treatise that contains a star catalogue listing 1,022 stars, which is commonly described as roughly a thousand stars. The work was compiled in the 2nd century AD.
Sources 60 searched
- Early Astronomy in the University of Michigan Collections | Ptolemy’s Catalogue of Stars
The constellations retain their traditional names, already known through Aratus, Eratosthenes, and Hipparchus, with the addition of some new constellations, such as the Horse’s Head (no. 18) and the Southern Crown (no. 47). Ptolemy organizes his catalogue into tables, as we see in this ...
- Ptolemy's Almagest - Bell Library: Maps and Mapmakers
Identifying particular star locations as points on a grid requires the same techniques that are used in mapping the earth. The Almagest includes instructions for making a celestial globe with a system of coordinates (grid) for 1,022 stars, and the identification of 48 constellations.
- Ptolemy’s Almagest: Fact and Fiction Richard Fitzpatrick
• Ptolemy’s model actually very accurate.
- Was Ptolemy a Fraud?
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- Almagest - Wikipedia
It is significant that Ptolemy chooses the ecliptical coordinate system because of his knowledge of precession, which distinguishes him from all his predecessors. Hipparchus' celestial globe had an ecliptic drawn in, but the coordinates were equatorial. Since Hipparchus' star catalogue has not survived in its original form, but was absorbed into the Almagest ...
- Star catalogue - Wikipedia
Hipparchus (c. 190 – c. 120 BC) ... first value of the precession of the equinoxes. In the 2nd century, Ptolemy (c. 90 – c. 186 AD) of Roman Egypt published a star catalogue as part of his Almagest, which listed 1,022 stars visible from Alexandria....
- Almagest Stars - Ernie Wright
Books VII and VIII of the Almagest contain a catalog of 1022 stars divided into 48 constellations. The catalog survives today in several dozen manuscripts in Greek, Arabic, and Latin, the oldest of which date from the ninth century. Reconstruction of the original catalog from these imperfect ...
- Ptolemy's catalogue of stars: a revision of the Almagest
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- THE THOUSAND STAR MAGNITUDES IN THE ...
Al Sufi has 551 stars with magnitudes identical to those given in the Almagest, and this subset of stars includes copied magnitudes, influenced magnitudes, and · independently measured magnitudes. If these were all copied from Ptolemy, then I
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