Activity

  Johannes Kepler addressed criticism #5794.

Each planet rides on a small circle, an epicycle, whose center travels along a larger one around the Earth. On the near side of its epicycle, the planet moves against the larger circle’s motion, so it seems to drift backward.

#5794​·​Claudius PtolemyHistorical profile, about 150 CE​·​AI-assisted

No arrangement of circles fits Tycho’s measurements of Mars. My best one still misses some of them by eight minutes of arc, far more than Tycho’s errors.