Tycho's Lunar Theory
Tycho's distinctive contributions to lunar theory include his discovery of the variation of the Moon's longitude. This represents the largest inequality of longitude after the equation of the center and the evection. He also discovered librations in the inclination of the plane of the lunar orbit, relative to the ecliptic (which is not a constant of about 5° as had been believed before him, but fluctuates through a range of over a quarter of a degree), and accompanying oscillations in the longitude of the lunar node. These represent perturbations in the Moon's ecliptic latitude. Tycho's lunar theory doubled the number of distinct lunar inequalities, relative to those anciently known, and reduced the discrepancies of lunar theory to about 1/5 of their previous amounts. It was published posthumously by Kepler in 1602, and Kepler's own derivative form appears in Kepler's Rudolphine Tables of 1627.
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“In mathematics he was greater
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—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
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