Abstract
THE SECULAR VARIATION OF LATITUDES.—The American Journal of Science for December contains a paper on secular variations of latitudes, read by Prof. George C. Comstock at the Washington meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The determinations of the latitude of Greenwich made from the time of Flamsteed (1693) to now—that is, over a period of very nearly two centuries—indicate a very appreciable progressive diminution. But as the observations were made with five different instruments, and are affected, to an uncertain extent, by various sources of error, no definite conclusion can be drawn from them. In the cases of the latitudes of Pulkowa, Königsberg, Washington, and Madison, however, Prof. Comstock thinks there is definite evidence of a change of latitude, and from an examination of numerous absolute observations, and a reduction of recorded star-places, he arrives at the data contained in the following table:—
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 45, 210 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/045210a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/045210a0