Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.171

c9.171

43. The reasoning here referred to is the following: As the mean motions, in all astronomical tables, are determined by the comparison of (contd...) observations made at a great distance of time from one another; if x be the number of centuries between the beginning of the present, and the date of the more ancient observations, from which the moon's mean motion in the tables of Chrisnabouram is deduced; and if y denote the same for the more modern observations: then the quantity by which the moon's motion, during the interval x - y, falls short of Mayer's, for the same interval, is . (x² - y²) 9"