Here are some pages from an astronomy text I’ve been looking at lately.  It’s written by Petrus Apianus (German; 1495—1552).  He was apparently the first to have discovered the fact that a comet’s tail points away from the sun.

Questions to consider when looking at the pages:

• Do you find beauty in these pictures?
• What do you like or not like about them?
• What other pages from this book do you find intriguing and why?
• How does this book fit in with the physics we have dealt with in class?
• Or, how does our modern view of the workings of the planets differ from what appears in the pages of this book?
• Why do you think the tail points away from the sun?  (What do you think Petrus thought and what is the modern view of the comet tail deflection?  Hint: What are ‘solar winds’?)

This image tells us how to predict the latitude of the planet Mercury — it’s height in the sky (I think… I could be wrong).  Look closely at the elegant curves on this page, and note that there is a hand coming from a cloud that’s holding this scientific instrument for us.  how nice!  Why do you think the curves follow those specific patterns?

This image comes from the inside cover of the book.  I think it’s lovely…

and finally, pages on comets!  Note that the comet’s tail is always pointing away from the sun.

On the page below and throughout the book, the moon has a face, and he/she/it rarely looks pleased.  Rather, he/she/it looks a little annoyed!  Why do the sun and moon typically appear to be anthropomorphized?  Why don’t they appear to have human characteristics anymore, in our modern, iPhone-toting, Wikipedia-reading, know-everything world?

All images come from Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesareum. You can retrieve the digital version of the book from the Vienna University Observatory Rare Book Collection website, along with many other amazing books.