Alfonsine tablets
The Alfonsin Tables ( lat.Tabulae Alphonsinae ) were an astronomical work with tables for calculating the position of the sun , moon and the five classic planets Mercury , Venus , Mars , Jupiter and Saturn , which was made around 1252 to 1270 by order of Alfonso X. Castile and León under the direction of the Jewish scholars Jehuda Ben Mose and Isaak Ben Sid in Toledo .
The aim was to correct the Toledaner tables . The Alfonsine tables were based on the Ptolemaic system and determined the year to be 365 days, five hours, 49 minutes and 16 seconds, which is about 20 minutes too short compared to the sidereal year . Around 1500 the positions of the planets calculated in this way deviated from the observed positions by up to 2 °. The work was originally written in Castilian and was later translated into Latin. It became the most influential astronomical work in Europe until it was replaced in the 16th century by the Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold , which in turn were based on the work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus . Georg von Peuerbach used the Alfonsin tables for his astronomical book Theoricae novae planetarum .
literature
- José Chabás: The Diffusion of the Alfonsine Tables. The case of the Tabulae resolutae. In: Perspectives on Science 10, 2002, ISSN 1063-6145 , pp. 168-178.
- José Chabás / Bernard R. Goldstein: The Alfonsine tables of Toledo. Kluwer Acad. Publ., Dordrecht [u. a.] 2003, 341 pages, ISBN 1-4020-1572-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Owen Gingerich: Nikolaus Kopernikus and Tycho Brahe , in: Newtons Universum , Verlag Spektrum der Wissenschaft, series Understandable Research, Heidelberg 1990