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I wrote, about books dealing with lunars, on 12th April-

"There quite a big section on lunars in "A History of Nautical Astronomy", by 
Charles H Cotter (1968). This is thorough, but not
easy
going in my view. That's fair enough; the lunar method takes quite a bit of 
explaining. As well as lunars, it has a full treatment
of other methods of celestial navigation. It has a serious defect, however, in 
that it's littered with errors in the technical
details. A list of known or suspected errors is available on request. Cotter 
is long out-of-print, and becoming rather rare, so it
has got rather pricy. If you find a secondhand copy at less than ?50 ($80), 
you have done well. It's a mine of material, that can be
found nowhere else, except by digging through old publications in a good library."

=====================

I have been asked, off-list, about that list of errors in Cotter, referred to 
above. It was a joint work with Herbert Prinz and Jan
Kalivoda, and anyone is welcome to download it from-

http://www.huxtable.u-net.com/cotter01.htm

If anyone has difficulty in accessing that list, on request I will be happy to 
send it by another means. It's intended to enhance
the usefulness of Cotter's book.

Any comments about it would be welcome. Particularly in the case of 
disagreement with our assessments, or discovery of additional
errors.

Finally, thanks to Wolgang Koberer for significant additions to the list of 
works dealing with lunars. Clearly, there's a lot of
interesting stuff in other languages than English. It leaves me feeling very 
inadequate. I can just about manage simple written
French, very slowly, with a good dictionary.

George.

===============

contact George Huxtable at george@huxtable.u-net.com
or at +44 1865 820222 (from UK, 01865 820222)
or at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.

   

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