NavList:

I need to point out a couple of things in this eclipse calculation topic:

1) It's mostly off-topic now. Is it an allied topic? Yes. Positional astronomy is fair game for short digressions --certainly. But the level of minute detail that is now being examined is not relevant. This isn't celestial navigation. Discussing Cook's actual observations strikes me as fair game, but they are nothing more than timings of the eclipse events. The computations performed back at home are positional astronomy, not navigation. I have now received "complaints" from two other NavList members expressing their frustration with the minutiae here, so please "take it to email" [email me directly at Frank@ReedNavigation.com if you need any contact email details].

2) Beware the "old is old enough" problem. This is my shorthand for the application of historical concepts from one historical decade to events (or in this case computations) in another decade, significantly removed from the first. Chauvenet's and Kerigan's and even Mackay's description of eclipse calculations were published up to ninety years after the eclipse in question. It may seem that all historical methods are fair game, that "old is old enough", but these textbook accounts of computations, especially almost a century later, can be linked at best speculatively to the computations in middle of the 18th century. Sometimes there is long-term stability in navigation computation methods, lasting decades, but that's unusual and cannot be assumed. In any case... off-topic.

Please close out the (public) eclipse computation discussion today. Thanks!

Frank Reed