Manual of Spherical and Practical Astronomy

Автор: William Chauvenet
Издательство: J.B. Lippincott & CO.
Страниц: 722
Год: 1874
Размер: 33,0 МБ

THE methods of investigation adopted in this work are in accordance with what may be called the modern school of practical astronomy, or more istinctively the German school, at the head of which stands the unrivalled BESSEL. In this school, the investigations both of the general problems of Spherical Astronomy and of the Theory of Astronomical Instruments are distinguished by the generality of their form and their mathematical rigor. When approximative methods are employed for convenience in practice, their degree of accuracy is carefully determined by means of exact formulae previously investigated ; the latter being developed in converging series, and only such terms of these series being neglected as can be shown to be insensible in the cases to which the formulae are to be applied. A.nd it is an essential condition of all the methods of computation from data furnished by observation, that the errors of the computation shall always be practically insensible in relation to the errors of observation : so that our results shall be purely the legitimate deductions from the observations, and free from all avoidable error.