2017 Sun and Polaris Ephemerii -status! 2/25/2017
for Land Surveyors (c) 2000-2016 jerry l. wahl

These  pages/files contain Sun and Polaris Ephemerii for the year 2016 suitable for use by land surveyors. These versions were generated by Jerry Wahl and verified by spot checks with the Astronomic Almanac and other sources. No warrantee is expressed or implied as to their accuracy or suitability for any specific purpose. These documents are offered as freeware. 

!!Users have reported errors in  the 2017 ephemeris files posted in early January. I have been working on a way to remedy this but it may not be for a few weeks.  In the meantime some users may find another site useful to generate solar and Polaris data.  It is:

http://www.c elnav.de/longterm.htm

That takes you to a javascript form which will computee data  for the sun and Polaris given the proper input.  That would be the year 2017, and a value of 65.6 seconds for delta-T.

When I get the original format ephem pages fixed I will post them. Thank you for your patience,

   -- Jerry Wahl

2014 and earlier Ephemeris pages

Explanation of (some) Column Data Abbreviations

Date

Sun

Declination: in degrees minutes and seconds  Note: negative values are south declination.

GHA: Greenwich Hour Angle in degrees minutes and seconds.

Eq o Time: EOT: Equation of Time in minutes and seconds.

Semi-DI: SD: Semi Diameter of the Sun in minutes and seconds.

Polaris

Declination: in degrees minutes and seconds.  Some users may use polar distance which is the angular complement of declination p - 90degrees minus declination.

GHA:  Greenwich Hour Angle in degrees minutes and seconds.

Upper: TUC:  Time of upper culmination or upper meridian passage.  This is redundant in the sense that it is derived from and used in the same way as the GHA already tabulated.  It is provided for the benefit of a few users who are familiar with it's use in preference to GHA.  Note: this is the time at Greenwich, and as such must be corrected to the longitude of the observer as well as for the time zone of the observer.