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One clear point that came out of Bolte's paper from the 1870s
referenced by Jan Kalivoda was that there's little difference in
precision between lunars taken with stars and lunars taken with the
sun.  Additionally, taking two lunars, one in either direction from the
moon (and equally spaced), is more accurate than taking one.  Then at
least one of the objects would need to be a star or planet. I vaguely
recall Chauvenet also making this second point.  Perhaps Frank could
summarize his data for us to illustrate his claim below and compare it
to the first point above.

On Jan 8, 2004, at 5:51 PM, Frank Reed wrote:
> George Huxtable replied:
> "So with respect to the Sun, the Moon ALWAYS moves more slowly, by
> about 1 part in 12, than it does with respect to the stars. No matter
> which
> side of the Sun it's on."
>
> Yes, that was a very silly error on my part. Thank you for the
> correction.
>
> As a practical matter, the difference of about 8% is probably quite a
> bit less than the improvement in accuracy that results from using the
> Sun in a lunar (it's easier to bring two disks into contact than to
> place a twinkling star on the limb of the Moon).
>
> Frank E. Reed
> [X] Mystic, Connecticut
> [ ] Chicago, Illinois

   

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