Next message: Alexandre Eremenko: "Re: No sextant, no watch, no almanach, nothing"
Interesting!
I've never heard of this:
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Frank Reed wrote:
> clockwork every 2 days, 20 hours, 49 minutes.
> It's the eclipsing binary star
> Algol in the constellation Perseus.
Which one in Perseus? Beta, Epsilon?
What does it mean "eclipsing binary star"?
Sometimes you see one star, sometimes two?
How long are the eclipses, and what is the exact period
(you only give to minutes, this is not enough to predict
for a whole year. One needs to seconds at least).
If these eclipses are seen with a naked eye,
they should be known since antiquity.
Has anyone ever proposed to use it for longitude?
Alex.
