KEILL || LE MONNIER, Institutions Astronomiques, 1746

Paris, Hippolyte-Louis Guerin & Jacques Guérin, 1746.

4to (250x197 mm), (8)-lxiv-660 pages and 15 folding plates.  binding : Contemporary full calf, gilt spin in six compartments. Corners bumped. First joint splitted on few centimeters. 

references: Lalande [p.428 : "Ces Institutions astronomiques sont un des meilleurs ouvrages qu'on ait fait en français sur l'astronomie élémentaire. On y trouve des tables de la lune de Flamsteed, &c. C'est une traduction de Keill, mais très améliorée, et qui été très utile à la France"] DSB [VIII, p.178-180 : " Of all his diverse interests, Le Monnier's work on lunar motion was the most extensive and the most important. In the first edition of the Principia, Newton had shown that the principal inequalities of the moon could be calculated from his law of universal gravitation; and in the second edition he applied these calculations to the observations of John Flamsteed. His methods, however, added little to the theory that Jeremiah Horrocks had suggested long before. Flamsteed calculated new tables based on Horrock's theory incorporating Newton's corrections, but he did not publish them. They appeared for the first time in Le Monnier's Institution Astronomiques (1746), his most famous work. It was basically a translation of John Keill's Introductio ad veram astronomiuam (London: 1721) but with important additions and with new tables of the sun and moon. The book [was] the first important general manual of astronomy in France"].

Price : 850 €