The object of this book is to give an account of the science of Astronomy, as it is known at the present day, in a manner acceptable to the general reader. The Ptolemaic system persisted unshaken for about fourteen hundred years after the death of its author. Clearly men were flattered by the notion that their earth was the most important body in nature, that it stood still at the centre of the universe, and was the pivot upon which all things revolved.