Abstract
“ALL astronomy,” says Laplace, “depends upon the invariability of the earth's axis of rotation upon the terrestrial spheroid and upon the uniformity of this rotation.” He adds that “since the epoch when the application of the telescope to astronomical instruments gave the means of obserying terrestrial latitudes with precision, no variations in such latitudes have been found which could not be attributed to errors of observation, which proves that since this epoch the axis of rotation has remained very near the same point on the terrestrial surface.” (“Mécanique Céleste,” tomev. page 22.) Admitting then the position of the earth's axis, and consequently the values of terrestrial latitudes, to be sufficiently invariable for the purposes of the astronomer, the question has been many times raised, whether this conclusion represents more than a kind of first approximation to the truth.
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Variations of Latitude1. Nature 48, 451–455 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/048451a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/048451a0