Talk:Jean Picard

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Picard: Right ascension
Picard did not develop right ascension coordinates: According to Wikipedia's own article on right ascension, right ascension was used by Hipparchus (c. 190 - c. 120 BC). What Picard did was to use very accurate pendulum clocks that had been developed by Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens to time the transit of a celestial object through the (Paris) meridian, which allowed him to determine very accurately its right ascension. See: (1) http://books.google.com/books?id=P5qICQuiGo8C&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=%22right+ascension%22+meridian+Picard&source=bl&ots=96j2AxzCN5&sig=mGfCKzme7cfF-B0pMKVsiglLPOg&hl=en&ei=P9fPSvzIKszM8Qab2ejvAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBgQ6AEwBDgK ; (2) scroll half-way down this page: http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Biographies/Auzout.html  ; (3) the first page of this pdf file: http://syrte.obspm.fr/journees2005/s1_17_Debarbat.pdf  ; and (4) lower left-hand column of this page: http://books.google.com/books?id=alwMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=%22right+ascension%22+Picard&source=bl&ots=yJTmRDbJZV&sig=FpleOogE_fLxueezk7ihjj68-38&hl=en&ei=Ab3PStqbGs_O8Qak1YntAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ6AEwADgK.

So Picard developed what became the standard method of determining a celestial object's right ascension. Cwkmail (talk) 00:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Reference to Gascoigne
"to attach a telescope with crosswires (developed by William Gascoigne) to a quadrant" It this information concerning crosswires is pertinent then it should be pertinent to quote who developed the telescope Otherwise it just seems like an attempt to minimize the contribution of one national as 'simply' wiring something 'developed' by a person from another nationality —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.225.227.26 (talk) 17:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

First name
On 27 July 2004, the first name was changed to Jean-Felix without giving a reason or providing a source. Throughout the literature, he is named Jean Picard. I changed his first name accordingly. --AHert (talk) 18:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)