Planetary Programs and Tables -4000 to +2800

By Bretagnon and Simon with Foreword by Meeus.

Product Information: 8.50" by 11.00", 165 pages, softbound, (see below for magnetic versions).

The tables and computer programs detailed in Planetary
Programs and Tables From -4000 to +2800 allow the computation of the positions of the Sun, and 7 planets with a precision better than 0.01 degree over the period -4000, +2000 for Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and +1600 to +2800 for Uranus and Neptune.

Until now, the astronomical tables covering large historic and prehistoric periods give the geocentric positions of the planets for equidistant dates. As an example, the tables of B. Tuckerman give the positions of the Sun and planets at 5-(Mercury, Venus) or 10-day (Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) intervals over the -600 to +1649. Coordinates are the longitude of the Sun, the geocentric longitudes and the geocentric latitudes of the planets. Such tables, over the entire period from -4000 to +2600 would include over 3,700,000 numbers and would constitute a 3,000 page book.

Instead, compact tables and simple computations of the Sun and planets on a small computer are described in this book. Time-dependent expansions of the longitude and radius vector of the Sun as well as the heliocentric coordinates of the planets are provided. These coordinates refer to the mean equinox and ecliptic of date.

For the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars each coordinate is represented in Planetary Programs and Tables From -4000 to +2800 by only by one formula provided for the entire period -4000 to +2600. This formula includes between 5 and 60 terms depending on the coordinate and planet.

For Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune the coordinates are expressed for time-spans of five years by power series with seven coefficients. The period -4000, +2600 is then constituted by 1320 time-spans of five years. In addition to the tables, formulae for corrections of aberration and nutation which allow you to compute apparent geocentric coordinates are provided.