University of Virginia Library

SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL ASTRONOMY.

Prof. Stone.

The courses in this school are arranged primarily for persons proposing
to become practical astronomers. The Junior course in Spherical
and Practical Astronomy is also recommended to students in
Engineering; the Junior course in Spherical and Practical Astronomy,
and the courses in Celestial Mechanics and Computing, are recommended
to graduate students in Mathematics.

The courses pursued are as follows:

I. Spherical and Practical Astronomy.—Each twice a week.

Junior.—Coördinates, their transformations, and their changes; time,
latitude, and longitude; interpolation; mechanical quadratures; least
squares.

Senior.—The telescope; the meridian circle; refraction; the equatorial;
subsidiary instruments; star catalogues.

Text-books.—Doolittle's Practical Astronomy; Chauvenet's Spherical and Practical Astronomy;
American Ephemeris; various memoirs and volumes of observations in the observatory
library.

II. Celestial Mechanics.—Each twice a week.

Junior.—Relations referring to position in orbit and in space; determination
of the elements of a parabolic orbit; determination of the
elements of an undisturbed orbit, no assumption being made in regard
to the eccentricity.

Senior.—Special perturbations; general perturbations.

Text-books.—Oppolzer's Lehrbuch zur Bahnbestimmung; Gauss's Theoria Motus; Laplace's
Mécanique Céleste; various memoirs.

III. Practice in Observing.

Junior.—Observations with the transit instrument for time and latitude;
with the small equatorial, of occultations, positions of comets, etc.

Senior.—Observations with the great equatorial.

IV. Practice in Computing.

Junior.—Reductions of observations; determination of the undisturbed
orbit of an asteroid.

Senior.—Reductions of observations; computation of the perturbations
of the asteroid whose orbit has been determined in the Junior
course, up to the time of the next opposition, including an ephemeris
therefor.

Students, upon entering the school, should have a working knowledge
of coördinate geometry, plane and spherical trigonometry, and differential
and integral calculus. A previous knowledge of French and
German will not be insisted upon; but both of these languages are continually
employed in the work of the school.

For other courses in Astronomy, see Mixed Mathematics, p. 30, and
Senior Natural Philosophy, p. 31.