shew), it is here to be neglected. The action of the sun, attracting the moon from the earth, is nearly as the moon's distance from the earth; and therefore (by what we have shewed in Cor. 2, Prop. XLV, Book I) is to the centripetal force of the moon as 2 to 357,45, or nearly so; that is, as 1 to 17829⁄40. And if we neglect so inconsiderable a force of the sun, the remaining force, by which the moon is retained in its orb, will be reciprocally as D². This will yet more fully appear from comparing this force with the force of gravity, as is done in the next Proposition.
Cor. If we augment the mean centripetal force by which the moon is retained in its orb, first in the proportion of 17729⁄40 to 17829⁄40, and then in the duplicate proportion of the semi-diameter of the earth to the mean distance of the centres of the moon and earth, we shall have the centripetal force of the moon at the surface of the earth; supposing this force, in descending to the earth's surface, continually to increase in the reciprocal duplicate proportion of the height.
PROPOSITION IV. THEOREM IV.
- That the moon gravitates towards the earth, and by the force of gravity is continually drawn off from a rectilinear motion, and retained in its orbit.
The mean distance of the moon from the earth in the syzygies in semi-diameters of the earth, is, according to Ptolemy and most astronomers, 59; according to Vendelin and Huygens, 60; to Copernicus, 60⅓; to Street, 602⁄5; and to Tycho, 56½. But Tycho, and all that follow his tables of refraction, making the refractions of the sun and moon (altogether against the nature of light) to exceed the refractions of the fixed stars, and that by four or five minutes near the horizon, did thereby increase the moon's horizontal parallax by a like number of minutes, that is, by a twelfth or fifteenth part of the whole parallax. Correct this error, and the distance will become about 60½ semi-diameters of the earth, near to what others have assigned. Let us assume the mean distance of 60 diameters in the syzygies; and suppose one revolution of the moon, in respect of the fixed stars, to be completed in 27d.7h.43′, as astronomers have determined; and the circumference of the earth to amount to 123249600 Paris feet, as the French have found by mensuration. And now if we imagine the moon, deprived of all motion, to be let go, so as to descend towards the earth with the impulse of all that force by which (by Cor. Prop. III) it is retained in its orb, it will in the space of one minute of time, describe in its fall 151⁄12 Paris feet. This we gather by a calculus, founded either upon Prop. XXXVI, Book I, or (which comes to the same thing) upon Cor. 9, Prop. IV, of the same Book. For the versed sine of that arc, which the moon, in the space of one minute of time, would by its mean
