Kepler by Walter W. Bryant
page 50 of 58 (86%)
page 50 of 58 (86%)
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go to England, promising him a warm welcome there. Kepler, however,
would not at that time leave Germany, giving several reasons, one of which was that he dreaded the confinement of an island. Later on he expressed his willingness to go as soon as his Rudolphine Tables were published, and lecture on them, even in England, if he could not do it in Germany, and if a good enough salary were forthcoming. In 1624 he went to Vienna, and managed to extract from the Treasury 6000 florins on account of expenses connected with the Tables, but, instead of a further grant, was given letters to the States of Swabia, which owed money to the Imperial treasury. Some of this he succeeded in collecting, but the Tables were still further delayed by the religious disturbances then becoming violent. The Jesuits contrived to have Kepler's library sealed up, and, but for the Imperial protection, would have imprisoned him also; moreover the peasants revolted and blockaded Linz. In 1627, however, the long promised Tables, the first to discard the conventional circular motion, were at last published at Ulm in four parts. Two of these parts consisted of subsidiary Tables, of logarithms and other computing devices, another contained Tables of the elements of the sun, moon, and planets, and the fourth gave the places of a thousand stars as determined by Tycho, with Tycho's refraction Tables, which had the peculiarity of using different values for the refraction of the sun, moon, and stars. From a map prefixed to some copies of the Tables, we may infer that Kepler was one of the first, if not actually the first, to suggest the method of determining differences of longitude by occultations of stars at the moon's limb. In an Appendix, he showed how his Tables could be used by astrologers for their predictions, saying "Astronomy is the daughter of Astrology, and this modern Astrology again is the daughter of Astronomy, bearing something of the lineaments of her grandmother; and, as I have already said, this foolish daughter, |
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