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Astronomical Almanac 2008
Data for Astronomy, Space Sciences, Geodesy, Surveying, Navigation and other applications.

Published by the Nautical Almanac Office,
United States Naval Observatory
in cooperation with
Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office

2Lbs 10 Ozs. Ship wt., $40.00

Special Offer: Purchase the Astronomical Almanac 2008 plus Planetary and Lunar Coordiantes 2001–2020 and pay only $59.95 Save $10.00

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PRELIMINARIES
Preface
Staff Lists
Corrections and changes to recent volumes
List of contributors
Contents
Related publications

Section A  PHENOMENA
Seasons: Moon's phases; principal occultations; planetary phenomena; elongations and magnitudes of planets; visibility of planets; diary of phenomena; times of sunrise, sunset, twilight, moonrise and moonset; eclipses, use of Besselian elements.

Section B  TIME-SCALES AND COORDINATE SYSTEMS
Calendar; chronological cycles and eras; religious calendars; relationships between time scales; universal and sidereal times; reduction of celestial coordinates; proper motion, annual parallax, aberration, light-deflection, precession and nutation; Besselian day numbers; second-order day numbers; rigorous formulae for apparent place reduction; position and velocity of the Earth; mean place conversion from B1950-0 to J2000-0 and from J2000-0 to 131950-0; matrix elements for precession and nutation; polar motion; diurnal parallax and aberration; altitude, azimuth; refraction; pole star formulae and table.

Section C  SUN
Mean orbital elements, elements of rotation; ecliptic and equatorial coordinates; heliographic coordinates, horizontal parallax, semi-diameter and time of transit; geocentric rectangular coordinates; low-precision formulae for coordinates of the Sun and the equation of time.

Section D  MOON
Phases; perigee and apogee; mean elements of orbit and rotation; lengths of mean months; geocentric, topocentric and selenographic coordinates; formulae for libration; ecliptic and equatorial coordinates, distance, horizontal parallax, semi-diameter and time of transit; physical ephemeris; daily polynomial coefficients; low'-precision formulae for geocentric and topocentric coordinates.

Section E  MAJOR PLANETS
Osculating orbital elements for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; heliocentric ecliptic coordinates; geocentric equatorial coordinates; times of transit; rotation elements; physical ephemerides.

Section F  SATELLITES OF THE PLANETS
Ephemerides and phenomena of the satellites of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (including the rings), Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Section G  MINOR PLANETS AND COMETS
Osculating elements for periodic comets; geocentric equatorial coordinates and time of transit for Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta; orbital elements, magnitudes and dates of opposition of the larger minor planets.

Section H  STARS AND STELLAR SYSTEMS
Lists of bright stars, UBVRI standard stars, uvby and H# standard stars, radial velocity standard stars, bright galaxies, open clusters, globular clusters, astrometric radio source positions, radio telescope flux calibrators, X-ray sources, quasars, pulsars and variable stars.

Section J  OBSERVATORIES
Index of observatory name and place; lists of optical and radio observatories.

Section K  TABLES AND DATA
Julian dates of Gregorian calendar dates; IAU system of astronomical constants; reduction of time scales; reduction of terrestrial coordinates; interpolation methods.

Section L EXPLANATION

Section M GLOSSARY

Section N INDEX