The only book of his which has been preserved is a treatise "On the dimensions and distances of the sun and moon," in which we find the results of the first serious attempt to determine these quantities by observation. He observed the angular distance between the sun and the moon at the time when the latter is half illuminated (when the angle at the moon in the triangle earth-moon-sun is a right angle) and found it equal to twenty-nine thirtieths of a right angle or 87°. From this he deduced the result that the distance of the sun was between eighteen and twenty times as great as the distance of the moon. Although this result is exceedingly erroneous, we see at any rate that Aristarchus was more than a mere speculative philosopher, but that he must have been an observer as well as a mathematician. This treatise does not contain the slightest allusion to any hypothesis on the planetary system...

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The only book of his which has been preserved is a treatise "On the dimensions and distances of the sun and moon," in which we find the results of the first serious attempt to determine these quantities by observation. He observed the angular distance between the sun and the moon at the time when the latter is half illuminated (when the angle at the moon in the triangle earth-moon-sun is a right angle) and found it equal to twenty-nine thirtieths of a right angle or 87°. From this he deduced the result that the distance of the sun was between eighteen and twenty times as great as the distance of the moon. Although this result is exceedingly erroneous, we see at any rate that Aristarchus was more than a mere speculative philosopher, but that he must have been an observer as well as a mathematician. This treatise does not contain the slightest allusion to any hypothesis on the planetary system..." in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.