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The Starry Universe of Johannes Kepler
Christopher M. Graney
Johannes Kepler described the Copernican universe as consisting of a central, small, brilliant sun with its planetary system, all surrounded by giant stars. These stars were far la…
How to make the Earth orbit the Sun in 1614
Christopher M. Graney
In 1614 Johann Georg Locher, a student of the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner, proposed a physical mechanism to explain how the Earth could orbit the sun. An orbit, Locher sai…
The Coriolis Effect Further Described in the Seventeenth Century
Christopher M. Graney
Claude Francis Milliet Dechales described the Coriolis effect in his 1674 Cursus seu Mundus Mathematicus. Dechales discussed and illustrated the deflection of both falling bodies a…
Mass, Speed, Direction: John Buridan's 14th century concept of momentum
Christopher M. Graney
In the 14th century the French thinker John Buridan developed a theory of motion that bears a strong resemblance to Newtonian momentum. Buridan's ideas include a quantity of motion…
126 Arguments Concerning the Motion of the Earth, as presented by Giovanni Battista Riccioli in his 1651 Almagestum Novum
Christopher M. Graney
In 1651 the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli published within his Almagestum Novum, a massive 1500 page treatise on astronomy, a discussion of 126 arguments for and ag…
On the telescopic disks of stars - a review and analysis of stellar observations from the early 17th through the middle 19th centuries
Christopher M. Graney, Timothy P. Grayson
Since the dawn of telescopic astronomy astronomers have observed and measured the "spurious" telescopic disks of stars, generally reporting that brighter stars have larger disks th…