The Wonders of Greek Astronomy

Jonathan Geertsen
November 21, 2010

1 Radius of the Earth

We are to imagine that we are greek geometers that are faced with the
challenge of calculating the radius of Earth. We have equipment to measure
the lengths of sticks, shadows, and objectst of other small objects. We are
based in Alexandria and Syrene, 575 miles due south of Alexandria, has a
well. This well’s waters are only touched by sunlight on the longest day of
the year.

We will assume the well is so deep that the only way sunlight reaches
the water in the well is when the sun is directly overhead, and the sun’s
rays are parallel to the well. During the same time when the sunlight is
parallel to the walls of the well we will place a stick of known length straight
up, perpindicular to the ground, that we assume is flat, in Alexandria and
the shadow of the stick will be measured. Imagine that there is a triangle
formed, whose legs are the length of the stick(h) and length of the shadow
of the stick(l). The hypotenuse is the distance between the farthest point of
the shadow to the end of the stick that is pointing into the air.

1
 Now we will find the angle θ that is angle between the two radii from the
center of Earth. The radii line up with the well in Syrene that is parallel to
the rays of the sun, and the stick in Alexandria, that casts a shadow. Going
back to the good old days of geometry we know that opposite interior angles
are equal, and the radii that passes through the stick in the figure hits both
parallel light rays from the sun. This means that the angle of the shadow of
the stick θ is the angle between the radii from the center of Earth, giving us
a key component in finding the radius of Earth from the arc length.

tan(θ) = l/h

θ = cot(l/h)
We will now use the distance between Alexandria and Syrene, 575 miles
or d, as the arc length of the surface of the earth that seperates Alexandria
and Syrene. This arc length is dependent upon the θ from the stick/shadow
triangle and the radius of Earth.

r = 575/θ = 575/cot(l/h)

2 To the Moon
Assuming that we found the radius of Earth, we must find how we would
determine the distance from the earth to the moon(a). The figure below
proves to be most helpful. The radii extend from the center of Earth to
Alexandria and Syrene. A straight line, cutting through the planer’s crust,
between Syrene and Alexandria is drawn to create to right triangle,as is
drawn in, and a third traingle between Alexandria, Syrene, and the moon.
The variable x is the half distance between Syrene and Alexandria. The angle
between Alexandria and Syrene is θ, so the angle of a smaller triangle is θ
/2. d1 and d2 are the distances between Alexandria and Syrene, respectively,
to the moon. α is the angle between the moon and Syrene,β is the angle
between Alexandria and the moon.σ is the angle between Alexandria and
Syrene. I will use the law of sines to find d1 , this is done after the illustration
below.

2
 (2x)/sin(σ) = d1 /sin(β)

d1 = (2xsin(β))(sin(σ)
I will now employ the same technique in order to determine d2 .

(2x)/sin(σ) = d2 /sin(β)

d2 = (2xsin(α))/sin(σ)
I will replace 2x by going back to the small triangles and determining a
relation for x.

sin(θ/2) = x/r

x = rsin(θ/2)
Now replacing x, in the equations for d1 and d2 the following equations
for d1 and d2 are attained.

d1 = (2rsin(θ/2)sin(β))/sin(σ)

d2 = (2rsin(θ/2)sin(β))/sin(σ)
From here one has to find the surface angles, α and β. From there
the property of the angles of a triangle summing up to 180 degress can be
used to find the angle σ, σ=180-α-β, and the distances from Alexandria and
Syrenene, d1 and d2 can be found.

3 To the Sun
Having determined the distance to the moon the Greeks attempt to find the
distance to the sun. Aristarchus of Samos measured the angle between the
sun and the moon, when the moon is at half-phase. To start lets make a
right triangle between the earth, moon, and sun as shown below. We will
label the angle between the moon and sun as β, the angle between the earth

3
and moon as α, the distance between the moon and the Earth will be a from
the previous problem, and the distance between the earth and sun will be c.

Using trigonometry we will cos(β) to relate the distance between Earth

and sun to the distance between Earth and the moon.

c = a/(cos(β))
We know that the distance c is larger than distance a because taking
the cosine of an angle less than 90 degrees gives us a number less than π/2.
Therefore c will be siginificantly larger than a. A very large source of error
is the measured angle between the moon and sun. the distance between the
earth and moon is a source of error, but the relation between the magnitude
of the distances a and c would remain the same.

4 To Venus
By repeated observations the Greeks came to the conclusion that the greatest
value of the angle between Venus and the sun was 43 ◦ 37’30”. I will use this
value to determine the ratio of the distance between Venus and Earth from
the sun. This solar orientation is drawn below. dV S is the distance between
Venus and the sun. dES is the distance between Earth and the sun. We
will use the known angle that our Greek friends determined and the sine
function to find a relation between the distances dES and dV S that is below
the illustration.

4
 sin(43 ◦ 370 30”) = dV S /dES

5 Mars, Earth, sun...RATIOS!!!

We are now to devise a way of getting an estimate of the ratio of the distance
of Mars and Earth from the sun. Allow me to draw a sketch of the sun,
Earth’s orbit, and Mars.

E1 and E2 are positions during Earth’s orbit that the angles between a
straight line from the sun to Mars and a line between the sun and Earth(dES )
is the same, θ/2. We must find β in order to determine the ratio. Also, the
time it takes Earth to go from position E1 to position E2 is important. It
takes 365.25 days for Earth to orbit the sun, it then takes a fraction, t/365.25,
for Earth to go from E1 to E2 . Using arc length(rθ) we know that the arc
length of the Earth’s orbit is 2π dES I will establish the arc legnth, lE1 E2 to
equal the following.

lE1 E2 = (2πtdES )/365.25

We know that the arc length equals dES θ we can set it equal to the above
equation replacing lE1 E2 .

dES θ = (2πdES t)/365.25

θ/2 = (πt)/365.25
A key part of this assumption is that the angles at E1 and E2 are right
angles. We can now find β.

5
 180 − 90 − (πt)/365.25 = β

β = 90 − (πt)/365.25
We can take the sine of β to establish a ratio between the distances between
the Earth(dES ) and Mars(dM S ) to the sun.

sin(β) = dES /dM S

sin(90 − (πt)/365.25) = dES /dM S