Abstract
Since time immemorial, the observations of the motion of the Moon in the sky have constituted one of the principal preoccupations of astronomers for countless generations. The reasons, originally, have been utilitarian rather than scientific; as the apparent motion of the Moon was so intimately connected with the calendar and time keeping for agricultural and cultic purposes. Until the advent of modern astronomy in relatively recent times, the observers had no way of understanding why the Moon kept moving in the sky in so complicated a manner (of which they discovered many essential features); and it was not until Newton’s discovery of the law of universal gravitation that the theory of the lunar orbit could gradually be developed on a logical basis.
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Bibliographical Notes
The subject of this section is severely classical, and has been extensively treated in the existing literature. E. W. Brown’s Lunar Theory (1896) or F. Tisserand’s Mécanique céleste (Volume III, 1894) are classics available to the modern reader in paperback editions of recent date. A shorter but adequate account of the lunar theory is contained in Chapters 12–14 of the Methods of Celestial Mechanics by Brouwer and Clemence (1961); while for still more concise survey of the field cf. Brouwer and Hori’s Chapter 1 in the Physics and Astronomy of the Moon (ed. by Z. Kopal, 1962).
For a recent discussion of the coupling between the motion of the Moon in space and about its center of gravity cf. Kondurar (1963) or Eckert (1965).
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© 1966 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Kopal, Z. (1966). The Motion of the Moon in Space. In: An Introduction to the Study of the Moon. Astrophysics and Space Science Library. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6320-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6320-2_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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