A Kepler's note on secular inequalities
History and Philosophy of Physics
2014-02-19 v1 Mathematical Physics
math.MP
Abstract
I discuss the problem of secular inequalities in Kepler by giving account of a manuscript note that has not been published until 1860. In his note Kepler points out the need for a model, clearly inspired by the method of epicycles, that describes the secular inequalities as periodic ones. I bring attention to this point, that seems to have been underestimated, since the references to Kepler's work usually report only that he observed a decreasing mean motion for Saturn and an increasing one for Jupiter.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1402.4439,
title = {A Kepler's note on secular inequalities},
author = {Antonio Giorgilli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.4439},
year = {2014}
}