thanks for the info,
interesting, but even more confusing. 30.6 is the actual number, but 30.6001 is really interesting as a fix for any floating point error. now the 29c from 1977 has the 001 but now i dont really know if the 25 book just abbreviated because of lack of space or it *preceded* the 001 hack.
certainly, that all modern versions of the algorithm use 30.6001 because they just copied older works. i thought meeus had invented it, but seeing older cases makes me question this.
and here's another interesting thing; any method predating computing would have used 30.6 so it must have been invented around this time. ie 1975'ish. i can see that using 30.6001 *works* as a tool to avoid problems early on. this is a kindof algorithmic archeology. :-)