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Thanks for Fred Hebard for explaining his remarks about various methods of
addressing the lunar-distance problem. I'm sorry if I snapped at him, and
hope he won't be deterred from raising such interesting questions in the
future.

With Bruce Stark, he has performed a useful service in getting an
explanation of part of Bruce's lunar-distance methods to this list:
something that Bruce has kindly explained to me before, in private
correspondence. I have been most impressed by the ingenuity that has gone
into constructing Bruce's tables: particularly in the use of Gaussian logs
to provide a useful short-cut.

Just as a by-the-way, although Fred said-
>both methods addressed
>the problem of clearing an observed lunar distance of the effects of
>refraction, parallax, semidiameter, augmentation, etc,

the process of "clearing" a lunar distance, as normally understood,
excludes corrections for semidiameter. Any necessary corrections to the
observed distance due to semidiameter are presumed to have been made
beforehand. The "clearing" process is confined to the effects of parallax
(including augmentation of the Moon's parallax) and refraction.

George Huxtable.

   

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