Page:Newton's Principia (1846).djvu/539

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the system of the world.
533

For the eccentricity is greatest when the moon's apogeon is in the syzygies, and least when the same is in the quadratures; and hence it is that the perigeon moon is swifter and nearer to us, but the apogeon moon slower and farther from us, in the syzygies than in the quadratures. But farther; the apogeon has a progressive and the nodes a regressive motion, both unequable. For the apogeon is more swiftly progressive in its syzygies, more slowly regressive in its quadratures, and by the excess of its progress above its regress is yearly transferred in consequentia; but the nodes are quiescent in their syzygies, and most swiftly regressive in their quadratures. But farther, still, the greatest latitude of the moon is greater in its quadratures than in its syzygies; and the mean motion swifter in the aphelion of the earth than in its perihelion. More inequalities in the moon's motion have not hitherto been taken notice of by astronomers: but all these follow from our principles in Cor. II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, Prop. LXVI, and are known really to exist in the heavens. And this may seen in that most ingenious, and if I mistake not, of all, the most accurate, hypothesis of Mr. Horrox, which Mr. Flamsted has fitted to the heavens; but the astronomical hypotheses are to be corrected in the motion of the nodes; for the nodes admit the greatest equation or prosthaphæresis in their octants, and this inequality is most conspicuous when the moon is in the nodes, and therefore also in the octants; and hence it was that Tycho, and others after him, referred this inequality to the octants of the moon, and made it menstrual; but the reasons by us adduced prove that it ought to be referred to the octants of the nodes, and to be made annual.

Beside those inequalities taken notice of by astronomers (p. 414, 445, 447,) there are yet some others, by which the moon's motions are so disturbed, that hitherto by no law could they be reduced to any certain regulation. For the velocities or horary motions of the apogee and nodes of the moon, and their equations, as well as the difference betwixt the greatest eccentricity in the syzygies and the least in the quadratures, and that inequality which we call the variation, in the progress of the year are augmented and diminished (by Cor. XIV, Prop. LXVI) in the triplicate ratio of the sun's apparent diameter. Beside that, the variation is mutable nearly in the duplicate ratio of the time between the quadratures (by Cor. I and II, Lem. X, and Cor. XVI, Prop. LXVI); and all those inequalities are something greater in that part of the orbit which respects the sun than in the opposite part, but by a difference that is scarcely or not at all perceptible.

By a computation (p. 422), which for brevity's sake I do not describe, I also find that the area which the moon by a radius drawn to the earth describes in the several equal moments of time is nearly as the sum of the number 237 310, and versed sine of the double distance of the moon from