Elements Of Astronomy - Couverture souple

Newcomb, Simon

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0548816670 ISBN 13 : 9780548816677

Editeur : Kessinger Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

A propos du livre

Biographie de l'auteur

Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 - July 11, 1909) was a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician. He made important contributions to timekeeping as well as writing on economics and statistics and authoring a science fiction novel. He studied mathematics and physics privately and supported himself with some school-teaching before becoming a functionary in charge of calculations at the Nautical Almanac Office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1861, he took advantage of one of the ensuing vacancies to become professor of mathematics and astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory, Washington D.C. he set to work on the measurement of the position of the planets as an aid to navigation, becoming increasingly interested in theories of planetary motion. By the time he visited Paris, in 1870, he was already aware that the table of lunar positions calculated by Peter Andreas Hansen was in error. While in Paris, he realised that, in addition to the data from 1750 to 1838 that Hansen had used, there was further data stretching as far back as 1672 and was able to use the “new” data to revise Hansen's tables. He was offered the post of director of the Harvard College Observatory in 1875 but declined, having settled that his interests lay in mathematics rather than observation. In 1877 he became director of the Nautical Almanac Office where he embarked on a program of recalculation of all the major astronomical constants. Despite fulfilling a further demanding role as professor of mathematics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University from 1884, he conceived with A. M. W. Downing a plan to resolve much international confusion on the subject. By the time he attended a standardisation conference in Paris, in May 1896, the international consensus was that all ephemerides should be based on Newcomb's calculations. In 1878, Newcomb had started planning for a new and precise measurement of the speed of light that was needed to account for exact values of many astronomical constants, when he received a letter from A. Michelson who was also planning such a measurement. Thus began a long collaboration and friendship. In 1880, Michelson assisted at Newcomb's initial measurement with instruments located at Fort Myer and the United States Naval Observatory, then situated on the Potomac River. Though Michelson published his first measurement in 1880, Newcomb's measurement was substantially different. In 1883, Michelson revised his measurement to a value closer to Newcomb's.

Présentation de l'éditeur

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Kessinger Publishing
• Date d'édition: 2008
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0548816670
• ISBN 13: 9780548816677
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 244
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Allemagne