The subculture (Part 2)

Hopefully without any distractions this time.

The geocentric astronomers and even the Sun centered astronomers worked off a framework where the Sun moved directly through the constellations -

http://community.dur.ac.uk/john.luce...n_ecliptic.gif

In this way it allowed the original Sun centered astronomers to have feet in both worlds where predictions of eclipses and positions of planets could exist with the direct/retrograde motions of the slower moving planets and their greater circumferences -

". . . the ancient hypotheses clearly fail to account for certain important matters. For example, they do not comprehend the causes of the numbers, extents and durations of the retrogradations and of their agreeing so well with the position and mean motion of the sun. Copernicus alone gives an explanation to those things that provoke astonishment among other astronomers, thus destroying the source of astonishment, which lies in the ignorance of the causes." 1596, Mysterium Cosmographicum, Kepler


In the late 17th century when accurate clocks started to emerge they introduced the RA/Dec system where the Sun not only moves through the constellations but also moves up and down against a celestial equator as a projection of the Earth's rotational characteristics directly to a celestial sphere -

http://community.dur.ac.uk/john.luce...solar_year.gif


This allowed observers to predict eclipses and transits to exact times within a day but it came at the expense of planetary modeling and solar system structure where the Lat/Long system maintains the basic fact as to how long it takes the Earth to turn once and not the RA/Dec framework which is in competition with the 360 degree/24 hour value.