Astronomy notebook, 1730 Digital

Volume containing Holyoke’s handwritten and illustrated manuscript copies of the works of English astronomers John Flamsteed (1646-1719) and James Pound (1669-1724) and English mathematician Robert Smith (1689-1768), as well as an almanac he authored himself. Inscribed on a blank page at the front of the volume is Edwardi Holyoke Liber 1730. The first part consists of Flamsteed’s The doctrine of the sphere, published in 1680; and Pound’s New and accurate tables for the ready computing of the eclipses of the first satellite of Jupiter, published in Philosophical Transactions in 1719. Next in the volume is Holyoke’s Aseensions oblique, or, A Table of oblique Aseensions in Time calculated to five degrees of North and South latitude of the ecliptic. Fitted to 42° 36' N. latitude on the Earth. The tables chart the ascension of stars and planets from observation sites that do not lie at the equator. The end of the volume is comprised of an excerpt of a chapter on a “Magick Lantern,” an early projector, from Smith’s A compleat system of opticks, published in 1738. A leaf with several illustrations from the chapter are pasted into the endpaper of the volume.