Almagest

Almagest is the Latin form of the Arabic name (al-kitabu-l-mijisti, i.e. "The Great Book") of an astronomical/astrological treatise proposing the complex motions of the stars and planetary paths, originally written in Greek as Hè Megalè Syntaxis by Ptolemy of Alexandria, Egypt. The date of Almagest has recently been more precisely established. Ptolemy set up a public inscription at Canopus in Egypt in 147/148 C.E. The late N. T. Hamilton found that the version of Ptolemy's models set out in the Canopic Inscription was earlier than the version in Almagest. Hence Almagest cannot have been completed before about C.E. 150, a quarter century after Ptolemy began observing http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~ajones/ptolgeog/biography.html. Its geocentric model was accepted as correct for over a thousand years in Arab and European societies.

External link

• On-Line copy of the Almagest's star catalog