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 Aristotle and Astronomers

Aristotle who was the tutor of Alexander the Great described the progression of the moon phases and concluded that they resulted from the fact that we see the different portions of its illuminated portions over a month. We, therefore, see only half of the total surface of the moon at any time, and the shape of the moon we see is determined by the portion of the sunlit side we can observe from the earth.

Aristotle also deduced that the sun was more distant from the earth than from the moon. He could tell because occasionally the moon passes between the earth and the sun causing the temporary phenomenon of solar eclipse. Aristotle also argued that the earth is round. His first argument was based on the fact that during a lunar eclipse we see the shape of the earth's shadow on the moon as round. If the earth were, for instance, a disk, we should sometimes see sunlight strike edge of the disk and its shadow on the moon would consequently be a line.

Aristotle's second argument was that people traveling southwards observe stars invisible in their previous location to appear above the southern horizon. In the northern sky the altitude of the North Star decreases as the traveler moves southwards indicating that the traveler must have moved over a curved surface.Aristotle, along with his contemporaries, rejected the notion that the earth was in motion. They reasoned that if the earth really did move around the sun, we should be observing the stars from different positions along the earth's orbit and thus see the stars as appearing to move in different directions. This expected apparent change in the direction of stars as a result of motion of the observer on a moving earth is termed parallax.

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