148 ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS 



Continuation of Mr. Loomis' Paper. Read April 16, 1S41, 



Being desirous of determining the comet's orbit with the greatest possible 

 accuracy, I sought for a collection of European observations. For such as I 

 have obtained I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. C. Walker. They em- 

 brace thirty-four observations at Hamburg, from January 29th to March 24th, 

 which are published in an abridged form in the Society's proceedings, Vol. I., 

 p. 275; twenty-six observations at Bonn, from February 3d to March 19th, 

 given in connexion with Kysseus' Ephemeris, in the Astronomiche Nachrich- 

 ten, No. 399 ; and twelve observations at Berlin, from January 25th to Feb- 

 ruary 21st. These, together with my own, make seventy-eight observations, 

 and are all which I have been able to obtain. In comparing the observations 

 I availed myself of Kysaeus' Ephemeris, which was found to represent the 

 comet's course tolerably well. The Hamburg observations are given more 

 fully in the Astronomische Nachrichten, Nos. 402 and 405. The comet's place 

 for February 4th, l?*" 47% does not accord with the other observations, and I 

 have therefore rejected it, presuming it must contain some error, and have em- 

 ployed the mean of the remaining observations for the same evening. The 

 declination for March 1st is also obviously erroneous, and I have rejected it 

 entirely. The Hamburg places are called apparent, by which I understand 

 that they are corrected for refraction merely. I have computed the correction 

 for parallax, and applied it to each observation. The Berlin observations were 

 supposed to have been already corrected for parallax. The following table 

 exhibits the corrections of Kysseus' Ephemeris by each of the observations: 



