When this book first appeared in 1793, there had been no
significant work on comets published in English since Edmond
Halley's death some fifty years before. In Europe the field was
dominated by French astronomers such as Pingre and Laplace, but
their ornate styles were often difficult to translate. In this
concise monograph, Sir Henry Englefield (c.1752 1822) draws both on
this continental work and on his own correspondence with William
Herschel to produce one of the few accessible manuals in English
for the computation of cometary orbits. He includes mathematical
examples as new formulae are introduced, along with detailed tables
and appendices. Englefield's particular interest was in the
development of scientific instruments suitable for travellers - he
devised a portable telescope and lent his name to the Englefield
mountain barometer - and his passion for efficiency shines through
in this work, still valuable to researchers in the history of
astronomy and comet science.
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