Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/282

 inconclusivenesse at least of the demonstrations of this Author, first proposed to consideration, and how both he, and all the Astronomers with whom he contendeth, do agree that the new Star had not any motion of its own, and onely went round with the diurnal motion of the primum mobile; but dissent about the placing of it, the one party putting it in the Celestial Region, that is above the Moon, and haply above the fixed Stars, and the other judging it to be neer to the Earth, that is, under the concave of the Lunar Orb. And because the situation of the new star, of which we speak, was towards the North, and at no very great distance from the Pole, so that to us Septentrionals, it did never set, it was an easie matter with Astronomical instruments to have taken its several meridian altitudes, as well its smallest under the Pole, as its greatest above the same; from the comparing of which altitudes, made in several places of the Earth, situate at different distances from the North, that is, different from one another in relation to polar altitudes, the stars distance might be inferred: For if it was in the Firmament amongst the other fixed stars, its meridian altitudes taken in divers elevations of the pole, ought necessarily to differ from each other with the same variations that are found amongst those elevations themselves; that is, for example, if the elevation of the star above the horizon was 30 degrees, taken in the place where the polar altitude was v. gr. 45 degrees, the elevation of the same star ought to have been encreased 4 or 5 degrees in those more Northernly places where the pole was higher by the said 4 or 5 degrees. But if the stars distance from the Earth was but very little, in comparison of that of the Firmament; its meridian altitudes ought approaching to the North to encrease considerably more than the polar altitudes; and by that greater encrease, that is, by the excesse of the encrease of the stars elevation, above the encrease of the polar elevation (which is called the difference of Parallaxes) is readily calculated with a cleer and sure method, the stars distance from the centre of the Earth. Now this Author taketh the observations made by thirteen Astronomers in sundry elevations of the pole, and conferring a part of them at his pleasure, he computeth by twelve collations the new stars height to have been alwayes beneath the Moon; but this he adventures to do in hopes to find so grosse ignorance in all those, into whose hands his book might come, that to speak the truth, it hath turn'd my stomack; and I wait to see how those other Astronomers, and particularly Kepler, against whom this Author principally inveigheth, can contein themselves in silence, for he doth not use to hold his tongue on such occasions; unlesse he did possibly think the enterprize too much below him. Now to give you to