Alfonsine tables
Tablas alfonsíes
- Date
- 1252-1272 · confidence medium
- Place
- Toledo, Castile-La Mancha, Spain
- Credited to
- Isaac ibn Sid and Judah ben Moses, commissioned by Alfonso X the Wise
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
Astronomical tables compiled in Toledo to calculate the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets according to the Ptolemaic model, with revised parameters. Spread from Paris around 1320, they were the standard astronomical reckoning manual of Latin Europe until the 16th century.
1252 is the epoch (the year of Alfonso X's accession) from which positions are computed; the tables were compiled around 1263-1272. The Paris Latin version (c. 1320) is not identical to the original Castilian one.
What it led to
- European ephemerides and calendars up to Copernicus
- prediction of eclipses and conjunctions in the late Middle Ages
- their mismatch with observation drove the Prutenic Tables (1551)