User:DR3bbarnes/Aristarchus of Samos

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He was a student of Strato of Lampsacus, who was the third head of the Peripatetic School in Greece. According to Ptolemy, during his time there, he observed the summer solstice of 280 B.C..^[1] Along with his contributions to the heliocentric model, as reported by Vitruvius, he created two separate sundials; one that is a flat disc and one that is hemispherical.^[2] He was influenced by the concept presented by Philolaus of Croton (c. 470 – 385 BC) of a fire at the center of the universe, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun.[2]

Size of the Moon and Sun

In On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, Aristarchus discusses the size of the Moon and Sun in relation to the Earth. In order to achieve these measurements and subsequent calculations, he used several key notes made while observing a lunar eclipse.^[3] The first of these consisted of the time that it took for the Earth's shadow to fully encompass the Moon, along with how long the Moon remained within the shadow. This was used to estimate the angular radius of the shadow.^[4] From there, using the width of the the cone that was created by the shadow in relation to the Moon, he determined that it was twice the diameter of the Moon at the full, non-central eclipse. In addition to this, Aristarchus estimated that the length of the shadow extended around 2.4 times the distance of the Moon from the Earth. ^[3]

Using these calculations, along with the aforementioned estimated distances of the Sun from the Earth and Moon from the Earth, he created a triangle. Employing a similar method of geometry that he previously used for the distances, he was able to determine that the diameter of the Moon is roughly one-third that of the Earth's diameter. In order to estimate the size of the Sun, Aristarchus considered the proportion of the Sun's distance to Earth in comparison to the Moon's distance from Earth, which was found to be roughly 18 to 20 times the length. Therefore, the size of the Sun is around 19 times wider than the Moon, making it approximately six times wider than the Earth's diameter.^[3]

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