century AD) was the first Chinese astronomer to mention precession. He estimated the rate of precession as 1° in 50 years (Pannekoek 1961, p. 92). Middle Ages and Renaissance In medieval Islamic astronomy, precession was known based on Ptolemy's Almagest, and by observations that refined the value. Al-Battani, in his Zij Al-Sabi', after mentioning Hipparchus calculating precession, and Ptolemy's value of 1 degree per 100 solar years, says that he measured precession and found it to be one degree per 66 solar years. Subsequently, Al-Sufi mentions the same values in his Book of Fixed Stars, that Ptolemy's value for precession is 1 degree per 100 solar years. He then quotes a different value from Zij Al Mumtahan, which was done during Al-Ma'mun's reign, as 1 degree for every 66 solar years. He also quotes the aforementioned Al-Battani's Zij Al-Sabi' as adjusting coordinates for stars by 11 degrees and 10 minutes of arc to account for the difference between Al-Battani's time and Ptolemy's. Later, the Zij-i Ilkhani compiled at the Maragheh observatory sets the precession of the equinoxes at 51 arc seconds per annum, which is very close to the modern value of 50.2 arc seconds. In the Middle Ages, Islamic and Latin Christian astronomers treated "trepidation" as a motion of the fixed stars to be added to precession. This theory is commonly attributed to the Arab astronomer Thabit ibn Qurra, but the attribution has been contested in modern times. Nicolaus Copernicus published a different account of trepidation in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543). This work makes the first definite reference to precession as the result of a motion of the Earth's axis. Copernicus characterized precession as the third motion of the Earth. Modern period Over a century later precession was explained in Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), to be a consequence of gravitation (Evans 1998, p. 246). Newton's original precession equations did not work, however, and were revised considerably by Jean le Rond d'Alembert and subsequent scientists. Hipparchus's discovery Hipparchus gave an account of his discovery in On the Displacement of the Solsticial and Equinoctial Points (described in Almagest III.1 and VII.2). He measured the ecliptic longitude of the star Spica during lunar eclipses and found that it was about 6° west of the autumnal equinox. By comparing his own measurements with those of Timocharis of Alexandria (a contemporary of Euclid, who worked with Aristillus early in the