Abstract
The motion of the Moon is principally determined by two bodies, the Earth and the Sun. If we consider the gravitational forces that affect the Moon, we find that it is not its nearest neighbour, the Earth, that has the greatest effect, but the more distant Sun. Although gravitational force decreases as the square of the distance, the Sun’s gravity exceeds that of the Earth, because of its far greater mass.
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References
E. W. Brown; An introductory treatise on the Lunar Theory; Cambridge University Press (1896), Dover Publications (1960). Description of the various perturbation-theory methods of analytically handling the motion of the Moon.
M. Chapront-Touzé, J. Chapront; ELP 2000–85: a semi-analytical lunar ephemeris adequate for historical times Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 190, p. 342; (1988). Mean orbital elements and perturbation terms describing the orbit of the Moon over long periods of time.
M. C. Gutzwiller, D. S. Schmidt; The motion of the moon as computed by the method of Hill, Brown and Eckert; Astronomical Papers of the American Ephemeris, vol. XXIII, part 1; Washington (1986). Analytical series expansions of the main problem relating to the motion of the Moon (without taking planetary perturbations into account).
Improved Lunar Ephemeris 1952–1959 Nautical Almanac Office; Washington, 1954. Revised version of Brown’s lunar theory of 1954 with all necessary perturbation terms and mean arguments. A good introduction to the theory of the lunar orbit and the basic perturbations can be found in the volume Himmelsmechanik II by Bucerius and Schneider [2]. The method of approximating functions by Chebyshev polynomials is explained in textbooks on numerical mathematics (see [11] and [13]).
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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Montenbruck, O., Pfleger, T. (1994). The Orbit of the Moon. In: Astronomy on the Personal Computer. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-02982-4_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-02982-4_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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