The ``Commentary'' of Hipparchos. II. Position of 78 stars (Q1203023)

The article under review belongs together with an earlier publication by the same authors [ibid. 29, 201-236 (1984; Zbl 0548.01005)]. Both articles deal with the only surviving work of Hipparchos, the Commentary to the Phenomena of Eudoxos and Aratos, and both apply sophisticated and (as far as it can be judged by the nonstatistician) sensible iterative statistical analysis to the data reported in this work. The first article had analyzed the sets of combined zodiacal data (where for instance it is told which point of the zodiac culminates when another appears at the horizon), using this to find the characteristic of the ``solid sphere'' on which Hipparchos appears to have made his measurements; it turns out that the most important source of imprecision is the thickness of the meridian armilla (c. \(0.5^ \circ)\), giving rise to bimodal histograms. Other apparatus errors are negligible in comparison. When this is taken into account, the obliquity of the ecliptic of the sphere is determined as \(\varepsilon=23^ \circ 43'\pm3'\) (while the text gives the rounded value \(24^ \circ)\), corresponding precisely to the actual value in Hipparchos's time, from which it may follow (but need not, cf. note 2 of the second article) that Hipparchos has measured this value himself and not taken it over from Eratosthenes as told by Ptolemy. The second article analyses the cases where a stellar rise, culmination or setting is combined with zodiacal data. It results that statistical distributions can only be normalized if stars have been depicted as circles with a radius of about \(0.85^ \circ\) -- apparently the same for all magnitudes, contrary to Ptolemy's proposal; with this assumption, the epoch of observation can be determined as \(-140\pm 25\). Since Hipparchos reports the rise and setting of stars which would be invisible at the horizon it is clear that the data have been measured on the solid sphere and not in direct observation. Analysis of the positions reveals an apparatus error either in the solid sphere, which will have been slightly eccentric and have been mounted \(0.3^ \circ\) off the polar axis; or, more likely, of a corresponding error in the measuring instrument (perhaps a spherical astrolabe). Both articles list the complete set of data which they use.