Newcomb's Tables of the Sun

Have you considered sponsoring a child

Newcomb's Tables of the Sun is a work published in the late 19th century by astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb. The work contains Newcomb's mathematical development of the position of the Earth in the Solar System, which is constructed from classical celestial mechanics as well as centuries of astronomical measurements. The bulk of the work, however, is a collection of tabulated precomputed values that provide the position of the sun at any point in time.

Newcomb's Tables were the basis for many published ephemerides throughout most of the 20th century, including the yearly almanacs of the U.S. Naval Observatory and the British Royal Observatory. The tables are seldom used now, as more accurate values can be computed on digital computers based on much more accurate measurements than were available to Newcomb. Also, he also did not account for the effects of general relativity which was unknown at the time. Nevertheless, his tabulated values remain accurate to within a few seconds of arc to this day.

Newcomb's work was no small accomplishment, especially considering that it predated the advent of digital computers by more than a half century. Emphasis is often placed on the tables themselves, rather than the underlying theory. The latter may turn out to be the more enduring work because the formulas he developed are still used in astronomical software and other computer algorithms.

Newcomb developed similar formulas and tables for the other planets; those of the inner planets have proved to be the most accurate.