| Year. | Conjunct. | Mean Time. | Geocentric Long. | Mid. Mean Time | Semi-dura. | Short. dist. |
| 1776. | Nov. 2. | 9h10′7″. | 7.11°3′36″. | 9h49′53″. | 0h36′42″. | 15′43″.A |
W. B.
[A48]. The calculations are here wanting, in Dr. Smith’s MSS.
[A49]. Here Dr. Rittenhouse’s ends: The remainder of the versification is continued by another hand.
[A50]. He never professed the business of making watches: the first mechanical occupation he assumed was that of a clock maker, an employment he pursued many years, in the earlier part of his life. W. B.
[A51]. Having, in the preceding note, adverted to the unimportant error in the text, wherein our Philosopher is stated to have pursued the employment of a watch-maker, instead of that of a clock-maker; it becomes necessary to notice, in this place, another mistake, though likewise an inconsiderable one, into which the liberal and candid writer of the article, above quoted, has been led. Dr. Rittenhouse’s Observatory, at Norriton—the place of his original residence and the seat of his farm-house—was erected prior to the celebrated “Astronomical Observations” made by him, in the year 1769; which were those relating to the Transit of Venus over the Sun’s disk, on the 3d of June in that year. W. B.
[A52]. The time above referred to, is supposed to have been in the year 1790 or 1791; though perhaps it may have been somewhat earlier. Dr. Sproat died in the autumn of 1793. W. B.
[A53]. An uncle of Copernicus was Bishop of Warmia, (in Ermeland, a little province of Poland,) and gave him a canonry in his cathedral of Frawenberg, a city in ducal Prussia, situated on the Frische Haff, at the mouth of the Vistula: it was there he began to devote himself to astronomy, at the age of twenty-eight years. His great work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, was completed about the year 1530: but his apprehensions of meeting with persecution from the bigotted ignorance of the age, in consequence of the system he therein promulgated, deterred him from publishing it until thirteen years after that period; and it is supposed that the agitation of his mind, occasioned by its appearance in the world, produced the sudden effusion of blood, which terminated his life on the 24th day of May, in the year 1543. W. B.