EFFEMERIDE ASTRONOMICA

8vo, pp. 20, [35] tables, [1] blank; with one engraved folding plate; very occasional light spotting and dustsoiling but otherwise clean and crisp; in contemporary speckled wrappers; some loss to spine, and extremities slightly frayed, especially to head of lower cover, but still an attractive copy.

Attractive copy of this rare collection of astronomical ephemerides for the year 1794 by the Veronese astronomer and mathematician Pietro Cossali (1748-1815), printed with customary elegance by Bodoni.

Cossali taught physics at the University of Parma from 1787 to 1805, before moving to Padua to be professor of mathematics. He published Effemeride Astronomica annually throughout his time in Parma, with each issue containing, in addition to the usual tables of forthcoming astronomical events, an short essay on an aspect of astronomy, in this instance on the use of the planisphere. Ephemerides, which described the position of important astronomical objects (stars, planets, comets, and more) throughout the course of the year, were useful both in observational astronomy and in navigation.

Cossali was heavily influence by Newton and Locke, wrote on Montgolfier's experiments with ballooning and the history of Italian mathematics, as well as on other astronomical matters, such as the solar eclipses of 1791 and 1804.

Not in Brooks; OCLC records copies at the University of Oregon, UCLA, and the Swedish National Library, with sets in Göttingen and the BnF; not in LibraryHub.