Given that this group has experts on the calendar and the earth’s orbit, I have a couple of questions.
1. Assuming that I was living a 1000 years ago, and had unlimited time watching the sun and stars (and without prior knowledge) how would I notice that each year was growing by about a quarter of a day? 2. Assuming that in 1850s I had access to a good transit telescope, and a reasonable clock (daily errors about 1 second a day), how would I refine the quarter of a day into several decimal places? These questions have been prompted by a debate in horological circles that the astronomers in the 1800s could have benefited by having a clock that was better than a second a month. My own view is that the 1 second a day was adequate because the clock is only put to use for differential measurements in time between frequent ‘clock stars’ each night and the transits of interest. Neglecting cloudy periods for the sake of argument. I look forward to receiving good advice. Regards, Doug
--------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
