Thanks! While that bio may sound a little "odd" to some, for Astronomy, it's typical to the point of classic. A life long interest that began at age 7, and never waned. A profound love of music, and still fascinated by the work of ancient astronomers - yep, classic.
On that topic of interest in ancient astronomers consider Aristarchus of Samos
astrosun.tn.cornell.edu
Aristarchus was one of those rare genius types that stand “head-and-shoulder” above their peers. Like Newton, when the mathematics of his day was inadequate for his needs, he simply developed a new branch of mathematics. For Newton it was calculus, for Aristarchus it was trigonometry Perhaps “he is most celebrated as the first to propose a sun-centred universe”
From www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk
He undertook the recalculation of all the known astronomical “constants”. Quickly realizing that the fundamental problem was the puny human lifespan relative to the timescale of the parameters he was trying to measure, he adopted two “work arounds”. First, he poured over ancient Mesopotamian measurement records, to increase his time base. Second, for those measurements for which he just didn’t have a sufficiently long time base, he took careful measurements, explained their significance, and left it to others after him to complete the work. Ptolemy, more famous than Aristarchus, did just that.
Since then, Jacobsen’s interest in the ancient, isn’t just shared among astronomers, it’s almost a fetish. As an example, the orbit of Uranus (cool it Clappy), is “tied down” because Galileo inadvertently included it as one of the “background stars” in his plots of the Jovian satellites.
Thanks again.
lurqer |
