Early modern European · 1543 (manuscript c. 1520–1541)
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
libri VI: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Book I, ch. 10, argues that the Earth's motion explains why 'the forward and backward arcs appear greater in Jupiter than in Saturn and smaller than in Mars', and why the reversals come more often in Saturn than in Jupiter (Rosen's translation). Book V, ch. 35 builds on Apollonius' theorem to find where a planet appears stationary, and ch. 36 works through Mars as an example, finding a retrograde arc of 1° 8′ over about 73 days near opposition.
- Author
- Nicolaus Copernicus
- Date
- 1543 (manuscript c. 1520–1541)
- Original language
- Latin
- Kind
- Mathematical astronomy
- Planets
- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn
Editions
3 editions.
| Year | Edition | © |
|---|---|---|
| 1543 | Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Nuremberg: Johannes Petreius, 1543) | PD |
| 1978 | Edward Rosen (trans.), Nicholas Copernicus: On the Revolutions (Warsaw/Kraków: PWN; London: Macmillan, 1978; repr. Johns Hopkins UP 1992) | © |
| 1984 | N. M. Swerdlow and O. Neugebauer, Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus's De Revolutionibus, 2 vols. (New York: Springer, 1984) | © |
Read it
One digitised copy.
- A page from the 1543 Nuremberg first editionSLUB Dresden, via Deutsche Digitale BibliothekPDOpen ↗
Copies stay with their holders; every link opens their site. Licence: PD public domain · CC BY · CC BY-SA · © rights reserved · ? not stated.
References
Also on the Early modern and modern shelf
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