Abstract
THE annual course which the moon takes in company with the earth round the sun was to me a long time a great puzzle, as it is to many others, until one day I demonstrated it to myself by the simplest method. Those who have some smattering of the heavenly bodies generally fail in their attempt to draw the moon's orbit; they find no explanation in popular works, and even in books written by well-known authors the subject of the moon's motion is altogether ignored. All that is found is a circle showing the moon's phases, and it is this circle which is fatal to the conception of the true orbit of the moon: even very young readers see the impossibility of a dozen or thirteen circles surrounding the sun.
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WILKS, S. The Moon's Course. Nature 58, 496 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058496a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058496a0
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