Article ID: CBB146147652

A mechanical concentric solar model in Khāzinī’s Mu‘tabar zīj (2022)

unapi

The paper brings into light and discusses a concentric solar model briefly described in Chapter 5 of Section III of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Khāzinī’s On experimental astronomy, a treatise embedded in the prolegomenon of his comprehensive Mu‘tabar zīj, completed about 1121 c.e. In it, the Sun is assumed to rotate on the circumference of a circle concentric with the Earth and coplanar with the ecliptic, but the motion of the vector joining the Earth and Sun is monitored by a small eccentric hypocycle. The ratio between the distance of the hypocycle’s center from the Earth and the hypocycle’s radius is equal to the solar eccentricity in the eccentric model. The model is to account for the constancy of the apparent diameter of the solar disk as held by Ptolemy. The source of the model is unknown. Since the mechanism employed in it clearly resembles the pin-and-slot device, whose use in mechanical astronomical instruments has a long history from the Antikythera Mechanism to the medieval solar, lunar, and planetary equatoria and dials, we argue that the solar model can be positioned within this long-standing tradition and considered the result of the correct understanding of some Byzantine prototype and thus a typical example of the transmission of astronomical ideas via media of the material culture.

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Authors & Contributors
Orchiston, Wayne
Ishiguro, Masato
Jean-Marie Michel
Jagdev Singh
Jean-Yves Thiant
Buick, Tony
Concepts
Instruments, astronomical
Solar astronomy
Scientific apparatus and instruments
Models and modeling in science
Astronomy
Radio astronomy
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
18th century
12th century
19th century
13th century
Places
Germany
France
Tokyo (Japan)
London (England)
Pyrenees (France and Spain)
Japan
Institutions
Osaka City University
Indian Institute of Astrophysics
Marāgha Observatory (Iran)
Great Britain. Board of Longitude
United States. Office of Naval Research
École Normale Supérieure, Paris
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