RA error acknowledged

Patrick Kelly, editor of the 2008 RASC Observer's Handbook, responded to my Sunday afternoon e-mail regarding the transposition of the Jupiter and Pluto labels in the Right Ascensions chart.

Hi Blake:

I caught that one when I was preparing the chart for this year. I think that James should already have the correction on the handbook web site, if not it should be there shortly.

Pat

Huh.

§

Once again, I noticed something... This impresses me. Again, I'm not trying to rub anyone's nose in it, but a couple of things occur to me:

• The Observer's Handbook is not perfect. I had this notion it was flawless. But there are chinks in the armour. It's damn fine armour! And, well, that's just the way it goes, I guess. A work of this magnitude, with many contributors, with imposing deadlines (I'm sure), mistakes are bound to creep in.
• Don't trust everything (anything?) you read.
• I'm not a slouch. I'm finding or noticing errors. And I cross-check things to see if I'm doing something wrong. I forget what that's called, where you don't lose yourself in some text, but that you're thinking about the text as your read it, questioning, evaluating.

Sorry, tooting my own horn a little. Gotta get whatever feathers in my cap that I can! Seriously, though, it shows me that I do know some things about astronomical matters.