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Cleomedes' Lectures on AstronomyA Translation of The Heavens$
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Cleomedes' Lectures on Astronomy: A Translation of The Heavens

Cleomedes and Lawrence Witmer

Print publication date: 2004

Print ISBN-13: 9780520233256

Published to California Scholarship Online: March 2012

DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520233256.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM CALIFORNIA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.california.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of California Press, 2022. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in CALSO for personal use.date: 17 May 2022

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Chapter:
(p.130) Chapter Three
Source:
Cleomedes' Lectures on Astronomy
Author(s):

Alan C. Bowen

Robert B. Todd

Publisher:
University of California Press
DOI:10.1525/california/9780520233256.003.0012

This chapter discusses that the Moon, other planets, and stars are not the size they appear to be. It illustrates that the Earth's shadow is neither funnel-like, nor cylindrical. The notion that the Moon too is not the size that it appears to be is caused by the eclipse of the Sun. That is because the Sun is eclipsed only when the Moon passes under it, and obstructs the line of sight; a solar eclipse, in other words, is a condition affecting not the Sun, but the line of sight. The Moon does appear large, in fact equal in size to the Earth, and larger than the other heavenly bodies, when in reality it is smaller than they, since it is closest to the Earth of all the heavenly bodies, and thought to be located right at the junction of the air and the aether.

Keywords:   Moon, heavenly bodies, Earth, Sun, solar eclipse, air, aether

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