Govaert Wendelen · 1644
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Govaert Wendelen (Godefridus Wendelinus, 1580–1667) was a Flemish priest and astronomer, one of the most careful observers of his generation and a correspondent of Riccioli, Gassendi and Mersenne. Eclipses lunares collects observations of lunar eclipses made between 1573 and 1643 and presents them as the observational foundation for his projected astronomical tables, the Tabulae Atlanticae.
The book opens with the judgements of fellow mathematicians on Wendelen’s work, among them Petavius and Malapert, and with his preface. Then come his methods: the places of observation and the differences of their meridians, how to observe the time, and the plan of the Atlantic and lunar tables. The body of the book is the eclipses themselves, Tycho’s and those observed chiefly throughout Europe in Wendelen’s own lifetime, each set out in turn, with a few solar eclipses among them.
The book belongs to the mid-seventeenth-century effort to rebuild astronomical tables on fresh, well-dated observations.
The source is the 1644 printing, from the Bavarian State Library.