Lunar theory

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

Lunar theory includes:

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 of lunar theory have included the following:-

The Moon has been observed for millennia. Over these ages, various levels of care and precision have been possible, according to the techniques of observation available at any time. There is a correspondingly long history of lunar theories: it stretches from the times of the Babylonian and Greek astronomers, down to modern lunar laser ranging.

Among notable astronomers and mathematicians down the ages, whose names are associated with lunar theories, are --

and other notable mathematical astronomers also made significant contributions, including: Edmond Halley; Philippe Gustave le Doulcet, Comte de Pontécoulant; John Couch Adams; George William Hill; and Simon Newcomb.

The history can be considered to fall into three parts: from ancient times to Newton; the period of classical (Newtonian) physics; and modern developments.

Of Babylonian astronomy, practically nothing was known to historians of science before the 1880s. Surviving ancient writings of Pliny had made bare mention of three astronomical schools in Mesopotamia – at Babylon, Uruk and 'Hipparenum' (possibly 'Sippar'). But definite modern knowledge of any details only began when Joseph Epping deciphered cuneiform texts on clay tablets from a Babylonian archive: in these texts he identified an ephemeris of positions of the Moon. Since then, knowledge of the subject, still fragmentary, has had to be built up by painstaking analysis of deciphered texts, mainly in numerical form, on tablets from Babylon and Uruk (no trace has yet been found of anything from the third school mentioned by Pliny).

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