Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars: Deduced From the Observations of Stephen Groombridge, Esq. F. R. S. S. R. A Nap;, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, &C, Reduced to January 1, 1810
In laying before the Public Mr. Groombridge's Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars, I think it necessary to state the most important points of its history, so far as I have the means of giving them correctly; and, in particular, to mention the circumstances which have caused me to appear as Editor of the work.
Mr. Groombridge's observations, as recorded in his Transit and Circle Books, commenced in the month of June in the year 1S06. The observations for some time appear to have been directed, in a great measure, to the formation of his Table of Refractions, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1S10 and 1814. After 1806, however, he applied himself to the observations necessary for the formation of a Catalogue of Circumpolar Stars, with an assiduity and regularity which would be most honourable to any established observatory. The number of observations made between 1806 and 1817 is (on a rough computation from the observing books) not fewer than 24,000 transits, and 26,000 observations of zenith distance. The reductions depending on clock error, index error, and instrumental error of all kinds, appear to have been made entirely by Mr. Groombridgc himself; and about one-half of the reductions to mean places appear to have been made by him. When it is considered that the prime of his life had been actively employed in commercial industry, that these observations and computations were the laborious amusement of advanced age, it will, I think, be allowed, that the work is one of the greatest which the long-deferred leisure of a private individual has ever produced.
Mr. Groombridgc, as I have heard from his friends, was extremely anxious for the speedy reduction and publication of his Catalogue.
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