Planets

Abstract

About half the corpus of mathematical astronomy—52% of the procedure texts, 41% of the tabular texts—is concerned with the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. §3.1 introduces the planetary phenomena and the terminology of the planetary texts. In §3.2 the composition of the procedure texts for the planets is briefly explored. §3.3 discusses generic elements of the computational systems, i.e. those concepts, parameters, period relations and algorithms that are common to all planets. §3.4–§3.8 are concerned with the algorithms for the individual planets. Critical editions of the planetary procedure texts are found in §5.2.