Customer Reviews

Movement and Rhythms of the Stars: A Guide to Nakes-Eye Observation of Sun, Moon and Planets

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Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to make sense of the universe before our modern age, when the only information you had to go on was what you could see with your own eyes?
This is an amazing book. It links us back with our past by describing the motions of the heavenly bodies as seen only by an earth bound observer without resorting to imaginary views of the solar system as if seen from afar.
How did Ptolemy, Copernicus and others develop there view of the universe? How would you?.. if the only method you had was to go out under the blazing stars in the depths of the night? By imaginging, measuring, calculating and thinking...to plot on an imaginary transparent dome the position of every heavenly body, every night of every year...
This is not an astrology book. It is deeply scientific, and explains from an earth-bound viewpoint such concepts as the precession of the equinoxes, retrograde motion of the planets, nodes, and cyclic patterns of eclipses. And yet you feel Joachim Schulz's deep sense of wonder and awe in every page.
The writing (translated from German) is clear, and the diagrams are astounding. Rotations and rhythms over time producing amazing spyrographic patterns acros the heavens are captured in the drawings, and you want to close your eyes and imagine the movements that create them.

This is a book to be treasured.

Geometric patterns in the orbits of the planets? Some astrology here... not into astrology myself (at least in the sense that the stars and the planets control our individual destinies), but the existence of geometric patterns and repeating numbers built into the relationships of the planets is just hard to dismiss as an accident. Read the book.