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A Brief Description of the Solar System

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A Brief Description of the Solar System is a popular astronomical work by James Ferguson (1710-1776), the Scottish self-taught astronomer, instrument maker, and lecturer who became one of the leading popularisers of Newtonian astronomy in eighteenth-century Britain. Ferguson rose from rural Banffshire poverty through self-education to fellowship of the Royal Society and royal patronage, and produced widely read books including Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles and Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics. His public lectures with mechanical orreries drew large London and provincial audiences. This shorter work presents the basic structure of the solar system, the motions of the planets, and the principles of eclipses and tides for a non-specialist reader in plain Newtonian terms.