ASTRONOMY. 



23 



be seen from the fact the R. A. on January 8 might have 

 been between 7 h. 35 m. and 10 1). 29 m. The space to be 

 examined was divided between Paris, Marseilles, Berlin, and 

 Pola. On the 2d of March, Palisa, of Pola, after having 

 mapped 2S00 stars, detected the missing asteroid. 



ASTEROIDS DISCOVERED IX 1877. 



Lumen, 141, was independently discovered by Watson and Borelly in 

 August, and Athor, 161, in Oct., by Palisa. The column "No." gives the 

 current number of each astronomer's discoveries. 



THE MOON. 



Professor Newcomb, of Washington, has published an in- 

 vestigation of corrections to Hansen's tables of the moon, 

 with tables for their application, forming Part III. of papers 

 printed by the United States Transit of Venus Commission. 

 The object of the memoir is to aid in the reduction of the 

 occultations observed by the various parties for longitude. 



In this paper is announced the discovery of an inequality 

 in the longitude of the moon, which has a period of 27.4 

 days. It can be put in the form 



u = -fl.5"sin. [<7+21.G(Y-1865.1]), 



g being the mean anomaly. 



This term was deduced empirically from a discussion of cor- 

 responding Washington and Greenwich observations. More 

 recently Neison, of England, has given an account of some 

 lunar perturbations produced by Jupiter^ and has shown that 

 these gave rise to a new periodical term in the moon's lon- 

 gitude, which could be expressed by 



&,= + 1.163" sin. 0+20.85 (Y-18G4.4)]. 



