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Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings ((ASSSP,volume 43))

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Abstract

The solar eclipse of AD 364 June 16 described by Theon of Alexandria in his commentary on Ptolemy’s Almagest has been used to study the secular acceleration of the Moon and the long-term changes in the rate of rotation of the Earth since the first investigations of these topics. All previous studies of this eclipse have been based (directly or indirectly) upon the 1538 Basel edition of the Greek text of Theon. In this paper I discuss the implication for studies of the Earth’s rotation of a correction proposed by A. Rome in 1950 to the text of the passage describing this eclipse in the Basel edition.

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Correspondence to John M. Steele .

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Steele, J.M. (2015). The Eclipse of Theon and Earth’s Rotation. In: Orchiston, W., Green, D., Strom, R. (eds) New Insights From Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07614-0_4

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