Friday, September 7, 2007

Eclipses

Aryabhata[476 AD] had stated that the Moon and planets shine by reflected sunlight. Thus the lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters into the earth's shadow and explains in detail the size and extent of this shadow. He also computed the size of the eclipsed part during eclipses. Indian computations of the duration of the lunar eclipse of 1765-08-30 was short by 41 seconds, whereas charts by Tobias Mayer, 1752 were long by 68 seconds. Aryabhata's computation of Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles.

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