Canon der Finsternisse, Theodor von Oppolzer 1887

Gallery 2 of 4, -375 to 477

These are pages from the Canon der Finsternisse.

The table on the right summarizes the contributions of those who performed the calculations for ranges of eclipses within the Canon. Theodor von Oppolzer directed the work of these ten “Rechners” (human computers).

One of Oppolzer’s assistants, Friedrich Karl Ginzel, went on to publish papers and maps with analysis of historical eclipses in antiquity.  Examples of Ginzel’s maps from 1918 are found in this web site’s 1911-1920 gallery of historical eclipses.

Below are two facing pages which comprise the first table of solar eclipses in the Canon. Each table describes exactly 50 eclipses and covers a span of roughly 20 years. This table presents eclipse data for the years -1207 to -1187.

The last section of the Canon is a series of maps which corresponds to the 160 tables of eclipses. The Canon also contains tables of lunar eclipses, but no maps or diagrams for lunar eclipses.

Oppolzer and his team of human computers calculated three points for each eclipse; begin, end, and mid-point. The eclipse maps which I publish on this web site are based on eclipse calculations for about 10 million gridded points.

You can click on these three pages to inspect them at full resolution.