284» Mr. Bowditch on the solar eclipse, Oct. 27, ‘1780. 
The ()—©) par. in long.—1’.18""0,, in latitude 51’ 268, ’s aug- 
mented semidiameter 16’ 29°06. Hence the conjunction at Provi- 
Jones by this observation was at Of. 40'11"2. The mean of this 
and the former result 0A. 40’ 399 is Oh. 40’ 25"°5, which may be as- 
sumed as the apparent time of conjunctioniat Providence. This, sub- 
tracted from the time of conjunction at Greenwich, gives the longi- 
tude of Providence 4h. 45’ 38-6, and by subtracting 18*8, the longi- 
tude of Goat Island, Newport, is obtained 44. 45’ 19-8 W from 
- Greenwich, which agrees nearly with the observations of the transit 
of Venus of June 3, 1769. 
The longitudes of these two places are liable to a greater error 
from the uncertainty of the moon’s latitude, than would have been the 
case if both contacts had been observed. For an increase of /seconds 
in the moon’s latitude would decrease the times of conjunction at 
‘these places by 0°33 seconds, which subtracted from the corres: 
ponding change in the time of conjunction at Greenwich 0” *53 7, leaves 
the variation of the longitudes just calculated 0-22 “Hence an ine 
crease of 5 seconds in the moon’s latitude (corrected as above) would — 
decrease the longitudes of Newport and Providence by one second of 
time, nearly, and the error from this source does not probably exceed 
At the apparent time of the conjunction at Greenwich 5h. 26/041, 
the moon’s tabular longitude was 214° 55’ 02-1, the sun’s: longitude 
214° 54’ 56”+4, the difference —5”-7 is the correction to be applied to 
the longitude of the moon given by Burg, supposing the solar tables 
to be correct. This is the same as ‘was assumed at the commence- 
ment of the calculation. tee 
To find the error in the moon’s latitude, the observations at Long 
‘Island, Beverly ,and Providence were used as follows. * 
