Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>]

Dear James,

While I have a very good background in Hebrew and Akkadian (having 
taught both languages for 12 years), I have little background in 
mathematics and astronomy. So here I have to rely on others. I use 
four astro-programs: TheSky6., SkyMap Lite, CyberSky 4, and TheSky X 
(for Macintosh). As for solar and lunar eclipses, all the programs 
give the same information, and this is the same as can be found at 
NASA.

Some of the positions of the moon and the planets found in old 
cuneiform tablets (some being real observations, an quite a lot being 
backward calculations) have very specific measures; some go down to 
the equivalent to 1/2 degree, and others even to a few minutes. In 
these specific cases there can be some problems because the programs 
sometimes differ, in special cases up to 2 degrees. I have discussed 
the reason for this with several US astronomers, and they have told 
me that the differences probably are caused by slightly different 
mathematical formulas in the different programs. Their advice has 
been to use TheSky X or the related TheSky6, because these are the 
most accurate programs. I have a colleague at the University of Oslo, 
who is professor in astrophysics with archaeoastronomy as one of his 
special fields. He has at my request made some calculations-not using 
any of the mentioned programs-and his results are almost exactly the 
same as those found by the help of TheSky X. I therefore think that 
the positions I have found has a good foundation.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


> Sounds like good stuff. That's the kind of thing I've been meaning 
> to look into for a long while.
>
> What sources do you use for astronomical events such solar eclipses etc?
>
> James Christian