Subject: Meeus book (was Re: Question about the sun)
From: Henry Spencer <henry@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Jan 14 1997
Newsgroups: sci.space.science

In article <5b4uso$4dc@wnnews.sci.kun.nl> Paul Kniest <p.kniest@nugen.azn.nl> writes:
>> Jean Meeus's book "Astronomical Algorithms" is the definitive source...
>
>Hey, this sounds like an interesting book. What kind of topics does it
>cover?

Just about any algorithm you can think of that would be of serious use for
observational astronomy.  For example, he describes how to calculate the
Moon's position within about ten arcseconds, which may sound simple but in
fact is a horribly difficult problem (a terse discussion takes three pages
of text and equations, and three more pages of tables of coefficients). 
Coordinate transformations.  Planetary positions.  Eclipses.  Positions of
the satellites of Jupiter.  Etc.  Note, it's an astronomy book, not a
space book. 
-- 
"We don't care.  We don't have to.  You'll buy     |       Henry Spencer
whatever we ship, so why bother?  We're Microsoft."|   henry@zoo.toronto.edu