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''De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). The book, first printed in 1543 in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire, offered an alternative model of the universe to Ptolemy's geocentric system, which had been widely accepted since ancient times. ==History== Copernicus initially outlined his system in a short, untitled, anonymous manuscript that he distributed to several friends, referred to as the ''Commentariolus''. A physician's library list dating to 1514 includes a manuscript whose description matches the ''Commentariolus'', so Copernicus must have begun work on his new system by that time. Most historians believe that he wrote the ''Commentariolus'' after his return from Italy, possibly only after 1510. At this time, Copernicus anticipated that he could reconcile the motion of the Earth with the perceived motions of the planets easily, with fewer motions than were necessary in the ''Alfonsine Tables'', the version of the Ptolemaic system current at the time. In particular, the heliocentric Copernican model made use of the Urdi Lemma developed in the 13th century by Mu'ayyad al-Din al-'Urdi, the first of the Maragha astronomers to develop a non-Ptolemaic model of planetary motion.〔Saliba (1979).〕 Observations of Mercury by Bernhard Walther (1430–1504) of Nuremberg, a pupil of Regiomontanus, were made available to Copernicus by Johannes Schöner, 45 observations in total, 14 of them with longitude and latitude. Copernicus used three of them in ''De revolutionibus'', giving only longitudes, and erroneously attributing them to Schöner. Copernicus' values differed slightly from the ones published by Schöner in 1544 in ''Observationes XXX annorum a I. Regiomontano et B. Walthero Norimbergae habitae, (Norimb. 1544 ).'' A manuscript of ''De revolutionibus'' in Copernicus' own hand has survived. After his death, it was given to his pupil, Rheticus, who for publication had only been given a copy without annotations. Via Heidelberg, it ended up in Prague, where it was rediscovered and studied in the 19th century. Close examination of the manuscript, including the different types of paper used, helped scholars construct an approximate timetable for its composition. Apparently Copernicus began by making a few astronomical observations to provide new data to perfect his models. He may have begun writing the book while still engaged in observations. By the 1530s a substantial part of the book was complete, but Copernicus hesitated to publish. In 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a young mathematician from Wittenberg, arrived in Frauenburg (Frombork) to study with him. Rheticus read Copernicus' manuscript and immediately wrote a non-technical summary of its main theories in the form of an open letter addressed to Schöner, his astrology teacher in Nürnberg; he published this letter as the ''Narratio Prima'' in Danzig in 1540. Rheticus' friend and mentor Achilles Gasser published a second edition of the ''Narratio'' in Basel in 1541. Due to its friendly reception, Copernicus finally agreed to publication of more of his main work—in 1542, a treatise on trigonometry, which was taken from the second book of the still unpublished ''De revolutionibus''. Rheticus published it in Copernicus' name. Under strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been unfavorable, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend, Bishop Tiedemann Giese, to be delivered to Rheticus in Wittenberg for printing by Johannes Petreius at Nürnberg (Nuremberg). It was published just before Copernicus' death, in 1543. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「De revolutionibus orbium coelestium」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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