How Aryabhatta calculated and explained 'eclipses'?

9 Jan 2020

How Aryabhatta calculated and explained ‘eclipses’?

How Aryabhatta calculated and explained ‘eclipses’?According to one of India's most sacred and historical texts, the Rig Veda, eclipses were discovered by the Indian mathematician, Aryabhatta.

The text contains information on some of the processes he used to discover the calculations for discovering solar eclipses.

Aryabhatta

Aryabhatta was the great Indian mathematician and astronomer who is credited with helping create trigonometry.
 	He is also credited with being the creator of “zero”.
 	Possibly his biggest contribution to astrology is that he calculated that the sun is 400 times further away from the earth than the moon.

How do eclipses occur?

Aryabhatta says that the Moon and planets simply shine by reflected sunlight.
 	Earlier it was assumed that the eclipse was caused by Rahu and Ketu, but Aryabhatta explains eclipses in terms of shadows cast by and falling on Earth.
 	The lunar eclipse occurs when the moon comes under the Earth’s shadow.
 	A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between sun and earth and partially or fully covers the sun.

There is an interesting article on the origin of Zero. You can read it here.

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According to one of India’s most sacred and historical texts, the Rig Veda, eclipses were discovered by the Indian mathematician, Aryabhatta. The text contains information […]

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Comments: 2

Sanaa says:

9 January 2020 at 9:21 pm

Did you know that Aryabhatta used zero in his decimal system and bramagupta defined 0

You can also go on the link of zero and check if I’m correct

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Shefali Ahuja-Gupta says:

10 January 2020 at 9:28 am

Indeed, Sanaa!

I can only imagine how exciting it must have been for those early mathematicians, when they found a way to express ‘nothing’ and place ‘nothing’ in the place value system. Zero threw open the doors to much more complicated and advanced calculations than were possible before its discovery / definition.

Thanks for responding, Sanaa 🙂
Stay curious, stay informed!

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