ARISTARCHUS OF SAMOS(310–230B.C.) was a famous Greek scientist, musi-cian, astronomer, and geometer. In hisbook On the Sizes and Distances of theSun and the Moon,he estimated the dis-tance to the sun by observing thatwhen the moon is exactly half full, thetriangle formed by the sun, moon, andthe earth has a right angle at the moon.His method was similar to the one de-scribed in Exercise 61 in this section.Aristarchus was the first to advance thetheory that the earth and planets movearound the sun, an idea that did notgain full acceptance until after the timeof Copernicus, 1800 years later. For thisreason Aristarchus is often called “theCopernicus of antiquity.”
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