by neufer » Fri Feb 26, 2016 4:59 am
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament wrote:
<<The firmament is the structure above the atmosphere, conceived as a vast solid dome. According to the Genesis creation narrative, God created the firmament to separate the "waters above" the earth from the "waters below" the earth. The word is anglicized from Latin firmamentum.
The word "firmament" is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250. It later appeared in the King James Bible. The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate (4th century). This in turn is derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with "firm". The word is a Latinization of the Greek stereoma, which appears in the Septuagint (c. 200 BC).>>
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act 2, Scene 2
HAMLET: This goodly frame, the earth,
- seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres wrote:
<<The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus and others. In these celestial models the apparent motions of the fixed stars and the planets are accounted for by treating them as embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial, transparent fifth element (quintessence), like jewels set in orbs. Since it was believed that the fixed stars did not change their positions relative to one another, it was argued that they must be on the surface of a single starry sphere.
Ancient and medieval thinkers considered the celestial orbs to be thick spheres of rarefied matter nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below. When scholars applied Ptolemy's epicycles, they presumed that each planetary sphere was exactly thick enough to accommodate them. By combining this nested sphere model with astronomical observations, scholars calculated what became generally accepted values at the time for the distances to the Sun (about 4 million miles), to the other planets, and to the edge of the universe (about 73 million miles).
Albert Van Helden has suggested that from about 1250 until the 17th century, virtually all educated Europeans were familiar with the Ptolemaic model of "nesting spheres and the cosmic dimensions derived from it". Even following the adoption of Copernicus's heliocentric model of the universe, new versions of the celestial sphere model were introduced, with the planetary spheres following this sequence from the central Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth-Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.>>
[quote=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament"]
[float=right][img3="[b][color=#0000FF]The sun, planets & angels and the firmament.
Woodcut dated 1475[/color][/b]"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/Scheme_of_things1475.gif/220px-Scheme_of_things1475.gif[/img3][/float]
<<The firmament is the structure above the atmosphere, conceived as a vast solid dome. According to the Genesis creation narrative, God created the firmament to separate the "waters above" the earth from the "waters below" the earth. The word is anglicized from Latin firmamentum.
The word "firmament" is first recorded in a Middle English narrative based on scripture dated 1250. It later appeared in the King James Bible. The word is anglicised from Latin firmamentum, used in the Vulgate (4th century). This in turn is derived from the Latin root firmus, a cognate with "firm". The word is a Latinization of the Greek stereoma, which appears in the Septuagint (c. 200 BC).>>
[b][list]Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act 2, Scene 2[/list]
HAMLET: [i][color=#0000FF]This goodly frame, the earth,
[list] seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.[/list][/color][/i][/b][/quote][quote=" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_spheres"]
[float=right][img3="[b][color=#0000FF]Geocentric celestial spheres; Peter Apian's Cosmographia (Antwerp, 1539)[/color][/b]"]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Ptolemaicsystem-small.png[/img3][/float]<<The celestial spheres, or celestial orbs, were the fundamental entities of the cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus and others. In these celestial models the apparent motions of the fixed stars and the planets are accounted for by treating them as embedded in rotating spheres made of an aetherial, transparent fifth element (quintessence), like jewels set in orbs. Since it was believed that the fixed stars did not change their positions relative to one another, it was argued that they must be on the surface of a single starry sphere.
Ancient and medieval thinkers considered the celestial orbs to be thick spheres of rarefied matter nested one within the other, each one in complete contact with the sphere above it and the sphere below. When scholars applied Ptolemy's epicycles, they presumed that each planetary sphere was exactly thick enough to accommodate them. By combining this nested sphere model with astronomical observations, scholars calculated what became generally accepted values at the time for the distances to the Sun (about 4 million miles), to the other planets, and to the edge of the universe (about 73 million miles).
Albert Van Helden has suggested that from about 1250 until the 17th century, virtually all educated Europeans were familiar with the Ptolemaic model of "nesting spheres and the cosmic dimensions derived from it". Even following the adoption of Copernicus's heliocentric model of the universe, new versions of the celestial sphere model were introduced, with the planetary spheres following this sequence from the central Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth-Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.>>[/quote]