1. “Ein schönes Document der feinsten analytischen Kunst”, cited in Asaph Hall, “Address of Professor Asaph Hall”, Science 1 (1880), 123.
2. Brian G. Marsden, “Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Developments in the Theory and Practice of Orbits Determination”, in Taton and Wilson (eds.), The General History of Astronomy, vol. 2B, p. 183.
3. The object observed by Piazzi was the first asteroid discovered, and named Ceres after the patron goddess of Sicily. See Hoskin, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy, pp. 186–191.
4. Gauss worked for many years on his techniques for calculating planetary and cometary orbits and in 1809 published a long paper called “Theoria motus corporum coelestium in sectionibus conicis solem ambientium” (“Theory of the motion of the heavenly bodies moving about the sun in conic sections”) which contained the refined form of his method of orbit determination. Yeomans, Comets, pp. 144–149; Brandt, John C., and Robert D. Chapman, Introduction to Comets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 17–18.
5. Yeomans, Comets, pp. 169–170.