Richard A. Proctor - Myths and Marvels of Astronomy

I have substituted this value in the article 'Astronomy,' of the British Encyclopædia , for the estimate formerly used, viz. 95,233,055 miles. But there is good reason for believing that the actual distance is nearly 92,000,000 miles.

It may be matched by other coincidences as remarkable and as little the result of the operation of any natural law. For instance, the following strange relation, introducing the dimensions of the sun himself, nowhere, so far as I have yet seen, introduced among pyramid relations, even by pyramidalists: 'If the plane of the ecliptic were a true surface, and the sun were to commence rolling along that surface towards the part of the earth's orbit where she is at her mean distance, while the earth commenced rolling upon the sun (round one of his great circles), each globe turning round in the same time,—then, by the time the earth had rolled its way once round the sun, the sun would have almost exactly reached the earth's orbit. This is only another way of saying that the sun's diameter exceeds the earth's in almost exactly the same degree that the sun's distance exceeds the sun's diameter.'

It has been remarked that, though Hipparchus had the enormous advantage of being able to compare his own observations with those recorded by the Chaldæans, he estimated the length of the year less correctly than the Chaldæans. It has been thought by some that the Chaldæans were acquainted with the true system of the universe, but I do not know that there are sufficient grounds for this supposition. Diodorus Siculus and Apollonius Myndius mention, however, that they were able to predict the return of comets, and this implies that their observations had been continued for many centuries with great care and exactness.