"Roy Smith" <roy at panix.com> wrote ... > "Steve Holden" <sholden at holdenweb.com> wrote: > > An ephemeris is a chart of planetary positions at certain times, used (among > > other things) to construct horoscopes. > > M-X Soapbox-Mode > > Steve, > > You do astronomy a disservice if the only example of the use of an > ephemeris you can come up with is horoscopes. That's kind of like saying > python is a cool language because you can use it to pick Zippy The Pinhead > quotes randomly out of a file. > Pardon me. My purpose was not to serve astronomy, a science which has many times proved itself quite ccapable of blowing its own trumpet. I am aware that horoscopes are not the only use of ephemerides (hence my use of "(among other things)" in my original post). I presume you are professionally involved in astronomy. Strange how you only climbed on your soapbox when someone mentioned astrology, an art rather than a science, but old as astronomy, if not older. So how was your wish to educate triggered? This is not atypical, of course. The science of astronomy has, as a body, attempted to discredit astrology for a long time. I won't speculate on the reasons, which aren't important to me since I am not involved in either activity. > An accurate table of planetary motion is essetial for celestial navigation > (i.e. figuring out where you are with a sextant and chronometer). Up until > WW-II, this was the ONLY way sailors (and aviators) out of sight of land > could know where they were. Polar explorers, too. Since WW-II, electronic > navigation systems have slowly reduced the importance of celestial, but it > continued to be an important skill up until the past decade or so, when GPS > really made it obsolete. > > In fact, an ephermeris is really a table of positions of any body in space, > not just the planets. The GPS system itself depends on the receivers > having an accurate ephemeris of the satellite orbital positions. > I stand corrected. > We would have never put a man on the moon without an accurate ephemeris. > Nor been able to send probes to visit other planets in our solar system. > > M-X Soapbox-Mode-Off > I should think so, too. Just the same, ephemerides *are* used to cast horoscopes, even though astronomers might prefer it if they weren't. but-it-*does*-move-ly yr's - sTeVe
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