Simon Marius and His Research PDF
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Historical & Cultural Astronomy Series Editor: Wayne Orchiston Hans Gaab Pierre Leich Editors Simon Marius and His Research Historical & Cultural Astronomy SeriesEditor: WAYNE ORCHISTON, Adjunct Professor, Astrophysics Group, University of Southern Queensland,Toowoomba,QLD,Australia EditorialBoard: JAMESEVANS,UniversityofPugetSound,Tacoma, WA,USA MILLERGOSS,NationalRadioAstronomyObserva- tory,Charlottesville,USA DUANE HAMACHER, Monash University, Melbourne,Australia JAMES LEQUEUX, Observatoire de Paris, Paris, France SIMON MITTON, St. Edmund’s College Cambridge University,Cambridge,UK MARC ROTHENBERG, Smithsonian Institution Archives,NorthBethesda,MD,USA CLIVERUGGLES,UniversityofLeicester,Leicester, UK XIAOCHUN SUN, Institute of History of Natural Science,Beijing,China VIRGINIA TRIMBLE, University of California Irvine,Irvine,CA,USA GUDRUN WOLFSCHMIDT, Institute for History of Science and Technology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg,Germany Moreinformationaboutthisseriesathttp://www.springer.com/series/15156 (cid:129) Hans Gaab Pierre Leich Editors Simon Marius and His Research Editors HansGaab PierreLeich SimonMariusSociety SimonMariusSociety Fürth,Germany Nürnberg,Germany ISSN2509-310X ISSN2509-3118 (electronic) Historical&CulturalAstronomy ISBN978-3-319-92620-9 ISBN978-3-319-92621-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92621-6 ©SpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG2018 OriginalGermanEditionpublishedbyAVA,Leipzig,(2016) Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthe materialisconcerned,specificallytherightsoftranslation,reprinting,reuseofillustrations,recitation, broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionorinformation storageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthispublication doesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevant protectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors, and the editorsare safeto assume that the adviceand informationin this bookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthepublishernortheauthorsor theeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontainedhereinorforany errorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.Thepublisherremainsneutralwithregardtojurisdictional claimsinpublishedmapsandinstitutionalaffiliations. Coverillustration:OnlyportraitofSimonMariusfromMundusIovialis,Nürnberg1614,)()()(2v.Credit: JayandNaomiPasachoffCollection ThisSpringerimprintispublishedbytheregisteredcompanySpringerNatureSwitzerlandAG. Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland Foreword A little more than 400 years ago, the German astronomer Simon Marius (1573– 1625) was one of the first to use the newly invented telescope for the study of planets, stars and the universe. Born in Gunzenhausen and working mainly in Ansbach, he discovered the four major moons of Jupiter independently of Galileo. Marius was the first to propose, in print, naming them Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, as originally suggested to him by Johannes Kepler. It is not (yet) so well known that Simon Marius also worked on many other interesting astronomical topics; e.g. he investigated the Andromeda nebula and described it as an extended sourceofpalelightwithitsintensitydecreasingoutwardsfromthecentre. ThiseditionisanexpandedEnglishversionoftheoriginalGermanvolumeSimon Marius und seine Forschung from 2016, which in turn was based on a conference aboutSimonMarius’slifeandworkjointlypresentedbytheNurembergAstronom- ical Society and the Study Group for History of Astronomy of the German Astro- nomicalSocietyin2014.Itcontainsmorethanadozenveryinterestingandhighly elucidatingchaptersonMariusandhisresearch.Thearticlesreflectthewealthand breadth of Simon Marius’s investigations and explorations; e.g. he studied and examined sunspots and comets, he worked on calendar making and astrology and healsoconsideredthe“worldatlarge”. SimonMarius accepted that Jupiter with its moons was something like a plane- tarysystemonitsown.Inthissense,heovercamethepurelygeocentricworldview. However,hestillbelievedthatJupiterwithitsmoonsorbitedtheEarth,aswouldthe other planets and the sun. So Simon Marius wouldn’t go the full distance to the heliocentricsystem,butrathergotstuckhalfway,similartoTychoBrahe;henceheis considered a“Tychonic”(andthereaders ofthisvolumewilllearnandunderstand why!). ThisbookaddssignificantnewresearchtothelifeandworkofSimonMarius.To pick just one article, Jay Pasachoff’s account of the parallel and independent discoveriesofJupiter’smoonsbyGalileoandbyMariusreadslikeathrillerandis very relevant for every researcher up to the present. Everyone interested in the history of astronomy in general and in the transition between the geocentric and v vi Foreword theheliocentricworldviewsinparticularwillbenefitalotbyreadingthisbook.This Englishversionwilloffertheseinterestingnewinsightstoaworldwideaudienceand hence broaden the potential readership significantly. It is my pleasure to thank the authors for their insightful contributions as well as the two editors Hans Gaab and Pierre Leich—who were in charge of the German version as well—for their very carefulandmeticulouswork.Maythisbookfindmanyinterestedreaders! HeidelbergUniversity,Heidelberg JoachimWambsganß Germany AstronomischeGesellschaft (GermanAstronomicalSociety) February2018 Preface Although the history of astronomy of the early seventeenth century has been well researched, the margravial court mathematician Simon Marius from Ansbach in SouthernGermanyhastillnowattractedlittleattention.Thiswasabovealltheresult of the—as we now know—unjustified accusation of plagiarism by Galileo Galilei. However, a critical appraisal of his early observations of comets, the moons of Jupiter,thephasesofVenusandsunspotshasbeensomewhatlacking. For this reason, theNürnberger Astronomische Gesellschaft (NurembergAstro- nomical Society) initiated the Simon-Marius-Anniversary 2014 on the 400th anni- versaryofhisopusmagnumMundusIovialis.66cooperationpartnersparticipatedin 60eventsonwhichmorethan250reportsappearedinthemedia. ThecentralprojectwastheMariusPortal(www.simon-marius.net),which,witha multilingual-menu navigation, documents everything by and about Marius. The webpage was launched in the Staatsarchiv Nürnberg (States Archive Nuremberg) on18thFebruaryandinthemeantimeformsthemostextensiveandmostimportant presentationofMarius. The mathematician, physician, astronomer and calendar maker experienced in 2014 a delayed gratification through the naming of asteroid (7984) Marius by the InternationalAstronomicalUnion. The concluding climax to the year was the conference “Simon Marius and his Times” in cooperation with the Arbeitskreis Astronomiegeschichte in der Astronomischen Gesellschaft (the Study Group for the History of Astronomy in the Astronomical Society)—the professional Association for German Astronomy and Astrophysics—as well as the Dr. Karl Remeis Observatory. It presented the actual state of research on Marius in the Nicolaus-Copernicus-Planetarium Nuremberg. Simon Marius—as became very clear during the conference—belonged to the small group of astronomers, who in the year following the introduction of the telescope in the Netherlands undertook observations and were aware that the new discoveries effected the question as to which was the correct cosmology. Also, although Marius rejected the Ptolemaic system, he was not prepared to accept heliocentrism preferring the Tychonic system. It is, however, exactly this vii viii Preface intermediate position, which makes his argumentation especially interesting for comprehending the Copernican Revolution and an engagement with Marius profitable. ThisvolumeresultedfromtheconferenceandwaspublishedinGermanwiththe title, Simon Marius und seine Forschung by the publisher AVA Akademische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig in 2016. The volume was taken up in the leading German seriesActaHistoricaAstronomiabytheserieseditorsWolfgangR.DickandJürgen Hamel. The book is now presented in a complete English translation, whereby several contributions were originally written in English. We are very pleased that authors couldbepersuadedfurthertocontributechapters,andthroughacompletedtransla- tion of Mundus Iovialis, both the most important text and the actual secondary literaturearegatheredtogetherinasinglevolume. Contact with Butler Burton was brought about through the good offices of Jay Pasachoff, so that Springer is publishing the volume in their series Historical and Cultural Astronomy. We thank Ramon Khanna the editor for astrophysics at the SpringerofficeinHeidelbergandMaurySolomontherelevanteditoratSpringerin NewYorkfortheirsupport. – This volume begins with the English translation of Mundus Iovialis. This was largelycarriedoutbyArthurOctaviusPrickardintheearlytwentiethcenturyand has now been completed by Albert van Helden, for this edition, who has translatedthosesectionsleftoutbyPrickard,suchasthesecondappendix. – HansGaabdeliversalongoverduebiographyasthesecondcontribution,which illuminatesSimonMarius’senvironmentanddisposesofaseriesoflegends. – Wolfgang R. Dick extends these observations with details about Hans Philip Fuchs von Bimbach, Simon Marius’s patron, who was responsible for his early acquisitionofatelescope. – Dieter Kempkens outlines the obligation of a court astronomer through the exampleofMarius’spredecessorGeorgCaesius. FollowingMarius’spersonalenvironment,thenextsection dealswithhisastro- nomicalobservations. – JayM.Pasachofftacklestheissueofthesimultaneousdiscoveryofthemoonsof JupiterbyGalileoandMarius,wherebythelatterfirstpresentedhisdiscoveryin detailinhisMundusIovialisin1614. – Thecometsof1596and1618andthecometresearchoftheperiodformthefocus ofJürgenHamel’sinvestigations,whichrevealadevelopmentfrom“Alumnus” inHeilsbronnin1596toexperiencedscholarinAnsbachin1618. – Dagmar L. Neuhäuser and Ralph Neuhäuser examine Marius’s sunspot obser- vationsandareabletocorrectthecurrentresearchinseveralpoints. ThenextsectionaddressesMarius’sabilitiesintheconstructionofastronomical theories. Preface ix – Christopher M. Graney clarifies with the question “Was Marius too good an astronomer?” why it was the perception of star size that led him to adopt the Tychonicsystem. – PierreLeichestablishestheconnectionbetweenthetelescopicobservationsatthe beginningoftheseventeenthcenturyandthedisputeaboutwhichcosmologyto adopt and documented on this basis the scientific legitimacy of Marius’s argumentation. The following essays investigate a field that was mandatory for a court mathe- maticianoftheperiod. – KlausMatthäuspresentsMariusastheeditorofyearlycalendarsandshowshow Marius distances himself from the prevalent calendars issued in his times and claimstoutilizethelatestcalculationmethod. – Richard L. Kremer examines the mathematical and astronomical basis for Marius’s calendar calculations, uncovers his sources and describes how Marius shapedhisrelationshipstocontemporaryastronomers. – Thony Christie undertakes a preliminary examination of Marius’s largest astro- logical work, his Tabulae Directionum Novae, in which he accuses RegiomontanusofhavingmisunderstoodPtolemy. Thefinalsectioncollectscontributionsonreceptionanddidactics. – JoachimSchlörexplainsthemotivationforaGermantranslation,withthehelpof whichstudentslearningLatincandevelopanunderstandingofthedramaticnew orientationoftheearlymoderncomprehensionoftheworld. – AlbertvanHeldensketchesthedebateaboutMariusatthestartofthetwentieth century,whichledtothefirstEnglishtranslationofMundusIovialis. – Pierre Leich follows up questions of priority, reception and rehabilitation of Simon Marius and traces the dispute from the charge of plagiarism up to the MariusPortalasvirtual“CollectedWorks”. – AlbertvanHeldenandHuibJ.Zuidervaartcontributeacautionarynoteaboutthe rehabilitationofMariusandontheinvolvementoftheHollanscheMaatschappij derWettenschappen. – Norman Anja Schmidt and Pierre Leich present in detail the Marius Portal as representationofSimonMariusinthedigitalageandgointoitsorigins,contents, technique,receptionandplannedfuturedevelopments. – The naming of the asteroid (7984) Marius gave Thomas Müller occasion to examine more closely those members of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. – RudolfPausenbergerexplainsthattheobservationsofGalileoandMariuscanbe simulatedinaplanetarymodel1:50billion,whichsuggeststheorbitingsatellite conclusiondrawnbythetwoobservers. – Finally,OlgaSinzevreportsonthetravellingexhibition“TheSun,theMoonand Marius” which resulted from the confrontation between the Russian Youth Art School,“Obraz”,andMarius’sfindings.
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