Prutenic Tables

Prutenic Tables

Tübingen edition of 1562
Author	Erasmus Reinhold
Language	Latin
Subject	Astronomy
Publication date	1551

The Prutenic Tables (

; he added redundant tables to his new tables so that compilers of almanacs familiar with the older Alfonsine Tables could perform all the steps in an analogous manner.

Several tables based on the Alfonsine Tables were published after the publication of the Prussian Tables. Copernicus's

had used for 300 years. The Alfonsine tables in Table of the Stars by Regiomontanus also were used by sailors and sea explores during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Christopher Clavius used Reinhold's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' work as a basis for the calendar reform instituted under Pope Gregory XIII.

Decades later, in Prague, Johannes Kepler compiled the Rudolphine Tables, based on Tycho Brahe's lifetime of astronomical observations, which were the most extensive and accurate observations until his time. Kepler completed the work in 1625 and managed to publish it in 1627.

In 1970 Owen Gingerich discovered Reinhold's heavily annotated copy of Copernicus' De revolutionibus. This inspired him to explore the dissemination and use of De revolutionibus in the several decades following its publication. Gingerich wrote about his explorations and their results, and the role of Reinhold's Prutenic Tables, in The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (2004).

Literature

• Owen Gingerich, "The role of Erasmus Reinhold and the Prutenic Tables in the Dissemination of Copernican Theory", Studia Copernicana, 6 (1973), 43-62.
• Owen Gingerich & B. Welther, "The Accuracy of Ephemerides 1500-1800", Vistas in Astronomy, 28 (1985), 339-342 [1].
• Owen Gingerich, "The Alphonsine Tables in the Age of Printing", in: M. Comes et al. (eds), De astronomia Alphonsi Regis (Barcelona, 1987), pp. 89–95.
• Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read, (2004, Walker Publishing Company).

External links

• Prutenicae tabulae coelestium motuum (1551) (ETH Bibliothek Zurich) (in Latin)
• Prutenicae tabulae coelestium motuum (1562) (University of Strasbourg) (in Latin)
• Astronomical Tables (University of Cambridge)