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Re: Lewis and Clark lunars: more 1803 Almanac data
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 Apr 16, 13:10 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2004 Apr 16, 13:10 -0600
On 16 Apr 2004 at 17:33, George Huxtable wrote:
> Maybe they have misidentified some other star
> as Aldebaran. Rigel gives a much closer answer, but still not close
> enough. I have eliminated any of the four planets, which weren't near
> the right place at that time.
If we consider the two series with Aldebaran (A and C in your
original message) as one series, then a least-squares fit gives an
apparent motion of the moon of 0.239?/hr. The almanac data shows that
the moon had an apparent motion with respect to Aldebaran of
0.534?/hr during that interval. So it would seem that the star Lewis
and Clark were observing was about 36? off the moon's path. Rigel
would be pretty close, moreso than Capella. There don't seem to be
any other obvious candidates. Is there any mention of whether it was
partly overcast? It's pretty hard to misidentify either Aldebaran or
Rigel.
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O_/ \ Ken Muldrew, PhD | Voice: (403) 220-5976 |
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<\__ \ Dept. of Cell Biology | Fax: (403) 270-0617 |
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"\ L | University of Calgary | kmuldrew@acs.ucalgary.ca |
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