the defects in the Greek astronomical tables, and new tables were from time to time issued, based on much the same principles as those in the Almagest, but with changes in such numerical data as the relative sizes of the various circles, the positions of the apogees, and the inclinations of the planes, etc.
To Tabit ben Korra, mentioned above as the translator of the Almagest, belongs the doubtful honour of the discovery of a supposed variation in the amount of the precession (chapter ii., §§ 42, § 50). To account for this he devised a complicated mechanism which produced a certain alteration in the position of the ecliptic, thus introducing a purely imaginary complication, known as the trepidation, which confused and obscured most of the astronomical tables issued during the next five or six centuries.
59. A far greater astronomer than any of those mentioned in the preceding articles was the Arab prince called from his birthplace Al Battani, and better known by the Latinised name Albategnius, who carried on observations from 878 to 918 and died in 929. He tested many of Ptolemy's results by fresh observations, and obtained more accurate values of the obliquity of the ecliptic (chapter i., § 11) and of precession. He wrote also a treatise on astronomy which contained improved tables of the sun and moon, and included his most notable discovery namely—that the direction of the point in the sun's orbit at which it is farthest from the earth (the apogee), or, in other words, the direction of the centre of the eccentric representing the sun's motion (chapter ii., § 39), was not the same as that given in the Almagest; from which change, too great to be attributed to mere errors of observation or calculation, it might fairly be inferred that the apogee was slowly moving, a result which, however, he did not explicitly stale. Albategnius was also a good mathematician, and the author of some notable improvements in methods of calculation.[1]
60. The last of the Bagdad astronomers was Abul Wafa
- ↑ He introduced into trigonometry the use of sines, and made also some little use of tangents, without apparently realising their importance: he also used some new formulæ for the solution of spherical triangles.
