Brad, No, Meeus's Elements of Solar Eclipses book does not tell how to calculate the Besselian elements. Rather, it LISTS these elements for all solar eclipses from 1951-2200. Its real strength is that it provides detailed numerical examples of how to USE these elements to calculate the path of totality (northern and southern edge), as well as the appearance, magnitude, contact times, and limit curves of the partial phases. It also explains how to determine the circumstances of the eclipse at any specific latitude and longitude.
To calculate the Besselian elements themselves, if you want to, first you need a source of highly accurate ephemerides for the Sun and Moon (such as from the Astronomical Almanac, NASA's Horizons, or Aldo Vatagliano's Solex shareware program). Then you need the algorithms for deriving the elements. These are given is such places as the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac (either the 1992 or 1961 edition), or William Chauvenet's Manual of Spherical Astronomy (various editions, 1863 to 1891; also reprinted by Dover in 1960). Calculating the elements is actually more straightforward than using them to get accurate local preditions and curves for an eclipse. -- Roger ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brad Lufkin" <bradley.luf...@gmail.com> To: "Sundial Mailing List" <sundial@uni-koeln.de> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 3:07 PM Subject: Re: Nasa website > Speaking of Meeus, does anyone know if his "Elements of Solar Eclipses" > includes algorithms for calculating the Besselian elements of eclipses or > just presents tables of results? Also, does the book present algorithms > for > calculating the paths of eclipses? It's not clear from the description on > the bookseller's website. > Regards, Brad --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
