United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
S. L. Tilley, afterward Sir Leonard Tilley, the well-known Canadian Minister of Finance. Peake, notwithstanding his official title, would seem to have been more than an ordinary janitor, as he was the author of a Guide to the Smithsonian Institution. The term "Nautical Almanac" is an unfortunate misnomer for what is, properly speaking, the "Astronomical Ephemeris."
To give my prophecy authority, I told her some curious circumstances which had hitherto happened to her, and which I had learnt now and again from herself or Madame Morin without pretending to heed what they said. With an Ephemeris and another astrological book, I made out and copied in six hours Mdlle.
We may, therefore, hope that all commercial nations will, before long, refer their longitudes to one and the same meridian, and the resulting confusion be thus avoided. The preparation of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac was commenced in 1849, under the superintendence of the late Rear-Admiral, then Lieutenant, Charles Henry Davis.
To recognize it, it is necessary to have an astronomical ephemeris showing its right ascension and declination, and star maps showing where the parallels of right ascension and declination lie among the stars. When once found by the naked eye, there will, of course, be no difficulty in pointing the telescope upon it.
Samuel got 150 pounds of bread, with a small quantity of rum and wine, also a quadrant and compass; but he was forbidden on pain of death to touch either map, ephemeris, book of astronomical observations, sextant, timekeeper, or any of my surveys or drawings.
There is no doubt, however, that everything superfluous had been dropped from time to time, until nothing remained that could possibly be dispensed with, and such books as they had, besides the Nautical Almanac and Ephemeris, if indeed under the circumstances they would even carry them, were probably the most important records of the expedition.
Each of the leading nations of western Europe issues such a publication. When the preparation and publication of the American ephemeris was decided upon the office was first established in Cambridge, the seat of Harvard University, because there could most readily be secured the technical knowledge of mathematics and theoretical astronomy necessary for the work.
After a careful survey of the field he selected Father Hell, Chief of the Observatory at Vienna, and well known as editor and publisher of an annual ephemeris, in which the movements and aspects of the heavenly bodies were predicted. The astronomer accepted the mission and undertook what was at that time a rather hazardous voyage. His station was at Vardo in the region of the North Cape.
Of the reward which had been offered, three thousand pounds were paid to the widow of Mayer, and three thousand pounds to the celebrated mathematician Euler for having invented the methods used by Mayer in the construction of his tables. The issue of the Nautical Ephemeris was intrusted to Dr. Maskelyne. Like other publications of this sort this ephemeris has gradually increased in volume.
The mechanism is as clear, as unquestionable, as absolutely settled and universally accepted, as the order of movement of the heavenly bodies, which we compute backward to the days of the observatories on the plains of Shinar, and on the faith of which we regulate the movements of war and trade by the predictions of our ephemeris. The mechanism, and that is all.
Word Of The Day