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Lunar Theory

Lunar theory attempts to model and predict the motion of the Moon, accounting for small variations or perturbations. It includes general mathematical techniques for analyzing lunar motion and generating formulas and algorithms to compute the Moon's position over time. Lunar theory has been developed and refined over 2000 years and is still used today for scientific and technological purposes like testing gravitational theories and maintaining accurate timekeeping standards.

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Manish Kumar
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18 views

Lunar Theory

Lunar theory attempts to model and predict the motion of the Moon, accounting for small variations or perturbations. It includes general mathematical techniques for analyzing lunar motion and generating formulas and algorithms to compute the Moon's position over time. Lunar theory has been developed and refined over 2000 years and is still used today for scientific and technological purposes like testing gravitational theories and maintaining accurate timekeeping standards.

Uploaded by

Manish Kumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lunar theory

Lunar theory attempts to account for the motions of the Moon. There are many small variations
(or perturbations) in the Moon's motion, and many attempts have been made to account for
them. After centuries of being problematic, lunar motion can now be modeled to a very high
degree of accuracy (see section Modern developments).
Lunar theory includes:

• the background of general theory; including mathematical techniques used to


analyze the Moon's motion and to generate formulae and algorithms for predicting its
movements; and also
• quantitative formulae, algorithms, and geometrical diagrams that may be used to
compute the Moon's position for a given time; often by the help of tables based on
the algorithms.
Lunar theory has a history of over 2000 years of investigation. Its more modern developments
have been used over the last three centuries for fundamental scientific and technological
purposes, and are still being used in that way.

Applications
Applications of lunar theory have included the following:

• In the eighteenth century, comparison between lunar theory and observation was
used to test Newton's law of universal gravitation by the motion of the lunar apogee.
• In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, navigational tables based on lunar
theory, initially in the Nautical Almanac, were much used for the determination of
longitude at sea by the method of lunar distances.
• In the very early twentieth century, comparison between lunar theory and observation
was used in another test of gravitational theory, to test (and rule out) Simon
Newcomb's suggestion that a well-known discrepancy in the motion of the perihelion
of Mercury might be explained by a fractional adjustment of the power -2 in Newton's
inverse square law of gravitation[1] (the discrepancy was later successfully explained
by the general theory of relativity).
• In the mid-twentieth century, before the development of atomic clocks, lunar theory
and observation were used in combination to implement an astronomical time scale
(ephemeris time) free of the irregularities of mean solar time.
• In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, modern developments of lunar
theory are being used in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Development
Ephemeris series of models of the Solar System, in conjunction with high-precision
observations, to test the exactness of physical relationships associated with
the general theory of relativity, including the strong equivalence principle, relativistic
gravitation, geodetic precession, and the constancy of the gravitational constant.

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