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Hipparchus: Quick Facts

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Facts

Also Known As Hipparchus of Bithynia • Hipparchos
Born İznik • Bithynia
Died After 127 BCE • Rhodes? • Greece
Subjects Of Study Moon • Sun • ecliptic • geocentric model • inclination • latitude • longitude • precession of the equinoxes • sidereal year • solar parallax • solar year • space motion • spherical triangle • measurement

Photos

Engraving of six astronomers, with Hipparchus seated at center and, from left to right, Galileo, Johannes Hevelius, Tycho Brahe, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Ptolemy standing, each holding scientific instruments.
Diagram showing Earth's axis of rotation tilted at about 23.5 degrees, illustrating precession as the axis traces a circular path over 26,000 years, shifting alignment from Polaris, the current North Star, to Vega. Labels indicate the plane of Earth's orbit and the changing orientation of the axis over time.
Tall white stone obelisk of the Astronomers Monument at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, with sculpted figures of astronomers around its base and a blue sky above.
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Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley
British scientist
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al-Battānī
Arab astronomer and mathematician
How did Ptolemy explain retrograde motion?
Ptolemy
Egyptian astronomer, mathematician, and geographer
Engraved portrait of Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler in profile, wearing a dark coat and ruffled white shirt, from the 1740s.
Leonhard Euler
Swiss mathematician
John Herschel
Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet
English astronomer
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Charles-Eugène Delaunay
French astronomer
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Ernest William Brown
British mathematician and astronomer
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Eudoxus of Cnidus
Greek mathematician and astronomer
Galileo
Galileo
Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
German astronomer
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al-Kāshī
Persian astronomer and mathematician
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Regiomontanus
German mathematician
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Kidinnu
Babylonian astronomer and mathematician
James Gregory.
James Gregory
Scottish mathematician and astronomer
Karl Schwarzschild
Karl Schwarzschild
German astronomer
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Benjamin Apthorp Gould
American astronomer
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Li Zhizao
Chinese mathematician and astronomer
Johann Lambert, detail of a lithograph by Gottfried Englemann, after a portrait by Pierre-Roch Vigneron
Johann Heinrich Lambert
Swiss-German scientist and philosopher
Sir Harold Spencer Jones.
Sir Harold Spencer Jones
British astronomer
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Abū al-Wafāʾ
Persian mathematician

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