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§ 68]
The Celestial Spheres
89
supposed changes in the obliquity of the ecliptic. A few writers invented a larger number. Outside these spheres mediaeval thought usually placed the Empyrean or Heaven. The accompanying diagram illustrates the whole arrangement.
Fig. 36.— The celestial spheres. From Apian's Cosmographia.
These spheres, which were almost entirely fanciful and in no serious way even professed to account for the details of the celestial motions, are of course quite different from the circles known as deferents and epicycles, which Hipparchus and Ptolemy used. These were mere geometrical
