Note 38 — LAPLACE.

This law is necessarily included in the law already enunciated by the author relative to the mean longitudes. The following is the most usual mode of expressing these curious relations: 1st, the mean motion of the first satellite, plus twice the mean motion of the third, minus three times the mean motion of the second, is rigorously equal to zero; 2d, the mean longitude of the first satellite, plus twice the mean longitude of the third, minus three times the mean longitude of the second, is equal to 180°. It is plain that if we only consider the mean longitude here to refer to a given epoch, the combination of the two laws will assure the existence of an analogous relation between the mean longitudes for any instant of time whatever, whether past or future. Laplace has shown, as the author has stated in the text, that if these relations had only been approximately true at the origin, the mutual attraction of the three satellites would have ultimately rendered them rigorously so; under such circumstances, the mean longitude of the first satellite, plus twice the mean longitude of the third, minus three times the mean longitude of the second, would continually oscillate about 180° as a mean value. The three satellites would participate in this libratory movement, the extent of oscillation depending in each case on the mass of the satellite and its distance from the primary, but the period of libration is the same for all the satellites, amounting to 2,270 days 18 hours, or rather more than six years. Observations of the eclipses of the satellites have not afforded any indications of the actual existence of such a libratory motion, so that the relations between the mean motions and mean longitudes may be presumed to be always rigorously true.—Translator.