Lars Gislén
Retired, affiliated researcher
Analysis of the Tamil Parallax Procedures in Le Gentil's Report of 1776
Author
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
Full text
- Available as PDF - 544 kB
- Available as PDF - 720 kB
- Download statistics
Links
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand
Topic
- Other Natural Sciences
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1440-2807