On The lunar Secular Acceleration: A Possible Approach

Abstract

The secular quadratic term in the expression of the Moon's longitude has been introduced empirically after the conclusion that its mean motion is not constant (Halley, 1695).

But, the explanation of this term and also of its numerical evaluation presented and still presents in our time great difficulties. All efforts, namely, to obtain an exact agreement between observed and theoretical value of Moon's secular acceleration were unsuccessful: the first of these two values exceeds always the second one by a very large amount. This discordance and unexplained residuals (O – C) in the mean longitude of the Moon gave rise finally to the statement that these are due to a retardation and irregularity in the Earth's rotation. But, after hardly a fifty years, this hypothesis revealed even more new difficulties and questions concerning also the problem of stability of the Earth-Moon system. It seems that there is a true reason for which this problem occurs as one of the unsolved problems of Celestial Mechanics (Brumberg and Kovalevsky, 1986; Seidelmann, 1986).