This article is about the Greek astronomer. For other meanings, see
Hipparchus (disambiguation) Hipparchus (
Greek ; ca.
190 BC – ca.
120 BC) was a
Greek astronomer,
geographer, and
mathematician of the
Hellenistic period.Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now
Iznik,
Turkey), and probably died on the island of
Rhodes. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from
147 BC to
127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of
antiquity. He was the first Greek to develop quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the
Sun and
Moon. For this he made use of the observations and knowledge accumulated over centuries by the
Chaldeans from
Babylonia. He was also the first to compile a
trigonometric table, which allowed him to solve any triangle. With his solar and lunar theories and his numerical trigonometry, he was probably the first to develop a reliable method to predict
solar eclipses. His other achievements include the discovery of
precession, the compilation of the first
star catalogue of the western world, and, probably, the invention of the
astrolabe. It would be three centuries before
Claudius Ptolemaeus' synthesis of astronomy would supersede the work of Hipparchus; it is heavily dependent on it.
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