The Nautical Almanac

This article is about the British official publications generically known by the name of The Nautical Almanac. For other uses including other nautical almanacs, see Nautical almanac (disambiguation).

Two sample pages of the 2002 Nautical Almanac

The Nautical Almanac has been the familiar name for a series of official British almanacs published under various titles since the first issue of The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, for 1767:[1] this was the first nautical almanac to contain data dedicated to the convenient determination of longitude at sea. It was originally published from the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England.[2][3][4] A detailed account of how the publication was produced in its earliest years has been published by the National Maritime Museum.[5]

Since 1958 (with the issue for the year 1960), His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office and the US Naval Observatory have jointly published a unified Nautical Almanac, for use by the navies of both countries.[6]

  1. ^ Nevil Maskelyne, The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, for the year 1767 (London: J. Nourse & Mess. Mount and Page, 1766).
  2. ^ "The History of HM Nautical Almanac Office". HM Nautical Almanac Office. Archived from the original on 30 June 2007. Retrieved 31 July 2007.
  3. ^ 'ESAE 1961': Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris and the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac ('prepared jointly by the Nautical Almanac Offices of the United Kingdom and the United States of America', HMSO, London, 1961)
  4. ^ 'ESAA 1992': ed. P.K. Seidelmann, Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac (CA, 1992).
  5. ^ Croarken (2002), pp. 106–126.
  6. ^ "History of the Nautical Almanac". US Naval Observatory. Archived from the original on 20 August 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2010.