Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T08:57:20.258Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘The Earth but a Satellite of the Sun’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

R. d'E. Atkinson
Affiliation:
(Royal Greenwich Observatory)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

I Have read Professor Taylor's article with great enjoyment. There are, however, two matters of fact on which, though they do not affect her main thesis, the record should, I think, be set right, (a) The earliest experimental proof of the Earth's revolution round the Sun was neither Bessel's detection of the relative parallax of 61 Cygni, nor Henderson's determination of the absolute parallax of α Centauri (both of which occurred in 1838) but Bradley's very beautiful discovery of aberration in 1725, together with his slightly later explanation. The discovery was made in a deliberate search for parallaxes; and although that particular proof of the Earth's movement was not then achieved, it was at once recognized that aberration provided a different and equally cogent one. Bradley's work was indeed resisted, in some quarters and for a short while, for reasons which Professor Taylor will by no means find unexpected. His later discovery of one term in the nutation was also a discovery of something which would have embarrassed Ptolemy, and delighted Newton; it certainly tended to confirm the picture, if that were needed. By the time parallaxes actually were discovered, though there still were individuals, sometimes of high rank, whose prejudices were stronger than their intellects, the only point of genuine doubt was the question how far away the nearest stars really were.

Type
Forum
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1958

References

REFERENCES

1Taylor, E. G. R. (1958). The Earth but a satellite of the Sun. This Journal, 11, 150.Google Scholar
2The following general reference should have been included in those given in the original article. Taylor, E. G. R. (1943). Ideas on the Shape, Size and Movements of the Earth. P. S. King and Staples for the Historical Association.Google Scholar