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.

"Science in the Archives" reveals affinities and continuities among the sciences of the archives, across many disciplines and centuries, in order to present a better picture of essential archival practices and, thereby, the meaning of science. For in both the natural and human sciences, archives of the most diverse forms make cumulative, collective knowledge possible. Yet in contrast to laboratories, observatories, or the field, archives have yet to be studied across the board as central sites of science. The volume covers episodes in the history of astronomy, geology, genetics, classical philology, climatology, history, medicine, and ancient natural philosophy, as well as fundamental practices such as collecting, retrieval strategies, and data mining. The time frame spans doxology in Greco-Roman antiquity to NSA surveillance techniques and the quantified-self movement. Each chapter explores the practices, politics, economics, and open-ended potential of the sciences of the archives, making this the first book devoted to the role of archives in the natural and human sciences.

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.

Skywatchers of Ancient Mexico helped establish the field of archaeoastronomy, and it remains the standard introduction to this subject. Combining basic astronomy with archaeological and ethnological data, it presented a readable and entertaining synthesis of all that was known of ancient astronomy in the western hemisphere as of 1980. In this revised edition, Anthony Aveni draws on his own and others' discoveries of the past twenty years to bring the Skywatchers story up to the present. He offers new data and interpretations in many areas, including: The study of Mesoamerican time and calendrical systems and their unprecedented continuity in contemporary Mesoamerican culture The connections between Precolumbian religion, astrology, and scientific, quantitative astronomy The relationship between Highland Mexico and the world of the Maya and the state of Pan-American scientific practices The use of personal computer software for computing astronomical data With this updated information, Skywatchers will serve a new generation of general and scholarly readers and will be useful in courses on archaeoastronomy, astronomy, history of astronomy, history of science, anthropology, archaeology, and world religions.

When I first laid out the framework for A History of Ancient Mathe matical Astronomy, I intended to carry the discussion down to the last applications of Greek astronomical methodology, i. e. Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler. But as the work proceeded, it became evident that this plan was much too ambitious, and so I decided to terminate my History with late antiquity, well before Islam. Nevertheless, I did not discard the running commentary that I had prepared when studying De revolutionibus in its relation to the methodology of the Almagest. Only recently, E. S. Kennedy and his collaborators had opened access to the" Maragha School" (mainly Ibn ash-Shalir), revealing close parallels to Copernicus's procedures. Accordingly, it seemed useful to make available a modern analysis of De revolutionibus, and thus in 1975 I prepared for publication "Notes on Copernicus. " In the meantime, however, Noel Swerdlow, also starting from Greek astronomy, not only extended his work into a deep analysis of De revolu tionibus, but also systematically investigated its sources and predecessors (Peurbach, Regiomontanus, etc. ). I was aware of these studies through his publications as well as from numerous conversations on the subject at The Institute for Advanced Study and at Brown University. It became clear to me that my own investigations lay at too superficial a level, and I therefore withdrew my manuscript and suggested to Swerdlow that he undertake a thoroughgoing revision and amplification of my "Notes. " His acceptance of my proposal initiated the present publication.