Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/53

§ 11] months the sun is on the whole lower down in the sky than in summer, and that in particular its midday height is less.

11. The sun's path on the celestial sphere is therefore oblique to the equator, lying partly on one side of it and partly on the other. A good deal of careful observation of the kind we have been describing must, however, have been necessary before it was ascertained that the sun's annual path on the celestial sphere (see fig. 4) is a great circle (that is, a circle having its centre at the centre of the sphere). This great circle is now called the ecliptic (because eclipses take place only when the moon is in or near it), and the angle at which it cuts the equator is called the obliquity of the ecliptic. The Chinese claim to have measured the obliquity in 1100 B.C., and to have found the remarkably accurate value 23° 52' (cf. chapter, § 35). The truth of this statement may reasonably be doubted, but on the other hand the statement of some late Greek writers that either Pythagoras or Anaximander (6th century B.C.) was the first to discover the obliquity of the ecliptic is almost certainly wrong. It must have been known with reasonable accuracy to both Chaldaeans and Egyptians long before.

When the sun crosses the equator the day is equal to the night, and the times when this occurs are consequently known as the equinoxes, the vernal equinox occurring when the sun crosses the equator from south to north (about March 21st), and the autumnal equinox when it crosses back (about September 23rd). The points on the celestial sphere where the sun crosses the equator ( in fig. 4), i.e. where ecliptic and equator cross one another, are called the equinoctial points, occasionally also the equinoxes.

After the vernal equinox the sun in its path along the