Talk:Thomas Henderson (astronomer)

Why I Changed the Stated Percentage Errors
This article states that Henderson found the distance to A Cen to be 3.25 LY, and the Wiki page for A Cen gives the actual distance as 4.37 LY. This article then stated that the percentage error on this is 33.7%. I confirmed by checking on the Wiki page "Approximation error" that to find the percentage error of a measurement, one divides the difference between actual and observed results by one percent of the actual measurement, not the reported one. Doing this, I come up with a figure of only 25.6%. The 33.7% previously given here would seem to be the result of dividing by 1% of Henderson's result; hence the change. Same song, second verse: Bessel's figure for the distance to 61 Cygni was mishandled in the same way; it has now been corrected.

Terry J. Carter (talk) 22:28, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Name was vandalised in 2006 and 2008
In 2006 an anon. user added the middle name "James", which has since percolated into other-language Wikipedias. There was no comment to justify the addition. In 2008 a user added the middle name "Alan" and some other changes that were more obviously nonsense. This was that user's only contribution. I've removed both middle names, which are not backed up by his marriage or birth records. Chi And H (talk) 20:50, 15 June 2017 (UTC)