The Astronomical Almanac contains a wide variety of both technical and general information. The book is a worldwide resource for fundamental astronomical data. It is a joint publication of the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office at the U.S. Naval Observatory and His Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office in the UK, and contains data supplied by many scientists and institutions from around the world.
Section A: PHENOMENA
information on the seasons, phases of the Moon, configurations of the planets, eclipses, transits of Mercury or Venus, sunrise/set, moonrise/set times, and times for twilight.
Section B: TIME-SCALES AND COORDINATE SYSTEMS
calendar information, relationships between time scales, universal and sidereal times, Earth rotation angle, definitions of the various celestial coordinate systems, frame bias, precession, nutation, obliquity, intermediate system, the position and velocity of the Earth, and coordinates of Polaris.
Section C: SUN
detailed positional information on the Sun, including the ecliptic and equatorial coordinates, physical ephemerides, geocentric rectangular coordinates, times of transit, and the equation of time.
Section D: MOON
detailed positional information on the Moon including phases, mean elements of the orbit and rotation, lengths of mean months, ecliptic and equatorial coordinates, librations, and physical ephemerides.
Section E: PLANETS
detailed positional information on each of the major planets including osculating orbital elements, heliocentric ecliptic and geocentric equatorial coordinates, and physical ephemerides.
Section F: NATURAL SATELLITES
orbital and physical data as well as ephemerides and phenomena of the satellites of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (including the rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
Section G: DWARF PLANETS AND SMALL SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES
positional and physical data on selected dwarf planets, positional information on bright minor planets and periodic comets.
Section H: STARS AND STELLAR SYSTEMS
mean places for bright stars, double stars, UBVRI standards, ubvy and H β standards, spectrophotometric standards, radial velocity standards, variable stars, exoplanet and host stars, bright galaxies, open clusters, globular clusters, ICRF2 radio source positions, radio flux calibrators, x-ray sources, quasars, pulsars, and gamma ray sources.
Section J:
A placeholder for new material under consideration for future editions of the almanac.
Section K: TABLES AND DATA
Julian dates, selected astronomical constants, relations between time scales, coordinates of the celestial pole, reduction of terrestrial coordinates, interpolations methods, vectors and matrices.
Section L: NOTES AND REFERENCES
notes on the data and references for source material found in the volume.
Section M: GLOSSARY
terms and definitions for many of the words and phrases.
Section N: INDEX
Air and Sea officers and controllers, astronomers and scientists would be interested in this scientific resource.
