AS 2001 Positional Astronomy

In February 1998, I gave a short series of lectures on Positional Astronomy for second-year students at St.Andrews University.
These pages basically provide a copy of the lecture handouts.
In some cases the text is slightly amplified.
I have also added some worked examples, mainly taken from the tutorial sheets.

Some sections of the text are in the form of GIF files, where I had to include symbols not available in standard HTML text. These may take some time to download. Please let me know if they come out too small to read comfortably.

• Introduction
• The Terrestrial Sphere
• Spherical Trigonometry
• Coordinate Systems: the horizontal or "alt-az" system
• Coordinate systems: the first equatorial or "HA-dec." system
• Coordinate systems: the second equatorial or "RA-dec." system
• Sidereal Time
• Conversion between horizontal and equatorial systems
• Galactic coordinates
• Ecliptic coordinates
• Equatorial and ecliptic coordinates
• The Sun's motion, and its effect on time-keeping
• Refraction
• Sunrise, sunset and twilight
• Geocentric or diurnal parallax
• Annual parallax
• Aberration
• Precession
• Calendars
• Exercise

Comments, complaints or queries?
E-mail Fiona Vincent.

Last updated 11/3/98.

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