The Depth of Association between the Ancient Star Catalogues

Hipparchus , In Arali et Eudoxi Phaenomena commentariorum lihri tres , ed. and transl. by Manitius K. (Leipzig, 1894).

Ptolemy's Almagest , transl. by Toomer G. J. (London, 1984).

Vogt H. , “Versuch einer Wiederstellung von Hipparchs Fixsternverzeichnis”, Astronomische Nachtrichten , ccxxiv (1925), cols 2–54; Grasshoff G. , The history of Ptolemy's star catalogue (New York, 1990).

Duke D. , “Associations between the ancient star catalogues”, Archive for history of the exact sciences , lvi (2002), 435–50.

Extensive simulation, discussed in op. cit. (ref. 4), establishes the statistical strength of this claim.

Swerdlow N. M. , “The enigma of Ptolemy's catalogue of stars”, Journal for the history of astronomy , xxiii (1992), 173–83.

Evans J. , “The Ptolemaic star catalogue”, Journal for the history of astronomy , xxiii (1992), 64–68.

James Evans (private communication).

Although Hipparchus gives us, for each star, the degree of the ecliptic on the horizon and the degree of the ecliptic that is culminating, he is redundant in giving us both, since one is easily calculated from the other. Thus the results for the four types of phenomena are not independent, and the deviation shown in Table 1 for the fourth phenomenon is of little significance.

Duke , op. cit. (ref. 4).