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Tabulae Regiomontanae reductionum observationum astronomicarum ab anno 1750 usque ad annum 1850 computatae is a famous book written by Bessel and published in 1830. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and geodesist(See Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Bessel).

I don't understand Latin, but I'm curious about what Bessel's book is about? This book was published in 1830, but the title of the book''ab anno 1750 usque ad annum 1850'' indicating that it was about events between 1750 and 1850. I would like to ask everyone about the content of Bessel's book and why he chose this title, infact published in 1830, but title ''ab anno 1750 usque ad annum 1850''.

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    $\begingroup$ It is interesting to read it : 602 pages at archive.org/details/tabulaeregiomont00bessuoft/page/222/mode/… $\endgroup$
    – Claude Leibovici
    Commented Sep 3, 2023 at 13:50
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    $\begingroup$ Well, a portion of the answer should be obvious: it contains tables for analyzing astronomical data, presumably based on observations starting in 1750. I'm curious about the choice of title too, and the best I can guess is that it was thought the tables would still be useful in their accuracy until about 1850. Given that the fulltext is freely available and that machine translation is relatively good, you'll be able to learn a lot on your own about what's in the book. Just start with the table of contents. $\endgroup$
    – rschwieb
    Commented Sep 3, 2023 at 13:52
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    $\begingroup$ In the not-too-distant past it was still expected for mathematicians to pick up other languages for reading and presenting research. Now I haven't done as well as that and you probably find the idea as daunting as I do, but I have had rewarding experiences working with machine translation to understand research in German and French. I'd encourage you to give it a shot too. $\endgroup$
    – rschwieb
    Commented Sep 3, 2023 at 13:54
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    $\begingroup$ The phrase "Tabulae Regiomontanae" in the title refers to tables published by Regiomontanus. $\endgroup$
    – Somos
    Commented Sep 3, 2023 at 14:15
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    $\begingroup$ AFAIK Gauss was the last great mathematician who chose to write in Latin (with the exception of Peano), but mathematicians up to the beginning of XX century were supposed to be somewhat versed in Italian, French, German and English; Latin was also standard knowledge. $\endgroup$
    – mau
    Commented Sep 3, 2023 at 15:07

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The title of the book says ''ab anno 1750 usque ad annum 1850 computatae'', that is "computed". Bessel precomputed positions of stars for the near future: there was even an addendum from 1850 to 1860, according to this source. BTW, "reductionum" (plural genivite of "reductio") is not related to the English "reduction". It comes from Latin root "re-ducere", to bring back. In this context, it means that the anomalies in the calculation of the positions were written down.

As for the entitling to Regiomontanus, he published the Ephemerides, where he computed the planets' motions for the following 32 years. I suppose that "Tabulae Regiomontanae" were called so in his honor.

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