These tables cover the period from the mid-17th to the 19th cent. when astronomical ephemerides were evolving most rapidly. These tables resemble those previously pub. by the APS: Tuckerman's "Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, 601 B.C. to A.D. 1" and "A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649" and Goldstine's "New and Full Moon, 1001 B.C. to A.D. 1651." The tables contain features consistent with the almanacs and ephemerides pub. in this period: planetary positions are computed for 12 hours U.T. (noon); and the Julian day number is given for new and full moons. An analytical essay examines the theoretical and computational developments in almanac-making in the period that bridges between Kepler and Laplace.

The need for these tables became pressing when hundreds of astronomical cuneiform tables in the British Museum became available for study, partly through the copies made in the 1880s and 1890s. All these texts originally came from some archive in Babylon which was discovered by Arabs in the middle of the 19th century. Most of the texts were written from about 330 B.C. to the first century A.D. Many of the texts are fragments of the original clay tables which have broken. In many cases, a fragment contains only parts of a few legible lines. Much of the information is of an astronomical character. It is evident that for investigations of these tablets the possibility of rapid scanning of accurately dated planetary positions is of primary importance.

These tables for A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649 are an extension, with some improvements, of earlier ones for 601 B.C. to A.D. 1. As before, they give the geocentric positions (tropic celestial longitudes & latitudes, i.e. with respect to the mean equinox of date), in units of 0 degrees.01 for the Sun & planets, & 0 degrees.1 for the Moon, at 16h Universal Time - 4 P.M. Greenwich Civil Time - 7 P.M. local mean time of 45 degrees East longitude (Babylon), on the indicated dates, all in the Julian calendar, hence for Julian dates 5n + 1/6 for the Moon, Mercury, & Venus, & 1-n + 1/6 for the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, & Saturn. The same adaptation of the theories of Leverrier, Gaillot, & Hansen, with modified elements by Schoch, was used as before, except as noted below. The chief change has been to improve the positions of Jupiter & Saturn. Tables.

These tables cover the period from the mid-17th to the 19th cent. when astronomical ephemerides were evolving most rapidly. These tables resemble those previously pub. by the APS: Tuckerman's "Planetary, Lunar, and Solar Positions, 601 B.C. to A.D. 1" and "A.D. 2 to A.D. 1649" and Goldstine's "New and Full Moon, 1001 B.C. to A.D. 1651." The tables contain features consistent with the almanacs and ephemerides pub. in this period: planetary positions are computed for 12 hours U.T. (noon); and the Julian day number is given for new and full moons. An analytical essay examines the theoretical and computational developments in almanac-making in the period that bridges between Kepler and Laplace.

This is a supplement to the planetary, lunar and solar tables produced by Bryant Tuckerman (1962, 1964). These tables have proved an invaluable aid to historians of astronomy. An important usage is the dating of ancient and medieval astronomical observations, but the tables also have wide application in determining the accuracy of early measurements and calculations. This supplementary volume owes its origin to the discovery by the authors of significant errors in Tuckerman's tabular positions of Mars. They made a comparison between Tuckerman's positions for the Sun and planets and those computed from an integrated ephemeris. Only in the case of the longitude of Mars were errors found to be serious.