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lars gislen

Lars Gislén

Retired, affiliated researcher

lars gislen

Analysis of the Tamil Parallax Procedures in Le Gentil's Report of 1776

Author

  • Lars Gislén

Summary, in English

The Tamil procedures for computing the circumstances of eclipses were reported by the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil from his visit to India in the 1760's. This paper investigates these Tamil procedures for a solar eclipse, focusing on the procedures for finding the eclipse parallax which are needed to describe the local appearance of an eclipse. These procedures constitute the essential difference between a solar and lunar eclipse. The procedures are compared with the parallax procedures in Sūryasiddhānta and give similar results. It is found that there seems to be little theoretical background to the Tamil procedures, although they work rather well in practice. There are parallels with parallax procedures in Southeast Asian traditional astronomy. The Tamil calculations of the circumstances of the lunar eclipse 13 December 1769 have earlier been analyzed by Otto Neugebauer in a paper in Isis.

Department/s

  • Particle and nuclear physics

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

391-399

Publication/Series

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage

Volume

26

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand

Topic

  • Other Natural Sciences

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1440-2807