Preliminary Results for Determination of Orbital Elements of the Moon through Libration Analysis

Hasan Al Banna1, Moedji Raharto2 and Mochamad Irfan3

Astronomy Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung 40132, Indonesia 2 Astronomy Research Group, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung 40132, Indonesia 3 Bosscha Observatory, Lembang 40391, Indonesia
1

Abstract
After hundreds years of study, the Earth's moon remains a misery. Many questions have yet to be answered. To name one its strange orbit. Due to sun's gravitational pull, the nodal line regresses while the line joining perigee to apogee precess at some periods. Such movements are determined by at least five orbital elements, namely inclination, ascending node, argument of perigee, time of perigee passage, and eccentricity. We will determine those elements at recent time by libration analysis. Keywords: moon, orbit, libration

1. Introduction
This is an ongoing project to determine the Moons recent orbital elements to some extent based on observation of the lunar libration. Viewed from the Earth, libration has some order of magnitudes about 10-15 arcseconds per day. A 10 megapixels camera, for example, can take images of the Moon with 1 arcsecond precision. This rough estimation alone might illustrate how good or how bad the libration can be calculated. Lunar libration is a periodic oscillation of the apparent position of the Moon's surface viewed from the Earth. In latitude, the libration is caused by the orientation of the Moon's orbital plane compared to the ecliptic, enabling us to view the north and the south limbs of the moon; while in longitude, the effect comes from the inequality between the spin and the orbital period [1]. Inversely, it should be possible to connect the libration pattern to the orientation and the dynamical element of the lunar orbit itself. Until this point, this project should not be expected to exert high accurate results of the lunar orbital elements, yet to judge to how much extent the method is worth developing for this scope.

P = AR[ I , t]

(2)

0 A= 0 0

s 0 0

x0 y0 , 1

(3)

Rt R = I ,

(4)

where A is the camera intrinsic parameters matrix and R and t is the rotation and translation of the camera relative to the reference object.

2. Methods
The data were obtained using a 10 mm Unitron refractor and Canon EOS 1100D throughout September 2012 with a total of 18 images. Figure 1 displays two sample images with less than 5 days interval, showing the visually observable lunar libration. The idea is to use 3D camera calibration method. This method is generally intended to form a matrix containing information which relates the actual coordinate system and the camera coordinate system [3,5,7]. The principle formulas used in this method are briefly presented below.

x = PX ,

(1)

where X is coordinates of a world point and x is its projection on the camera. P would be the projection matrix which can be expressed as

Figure 1. Sample of the Moons images. Notice the movement of six marked points, Plato (1), Aristillus (2), Archimedes (3), Kepler (4), Copernicus (5), and Euclides (6). They indicate the tilt of the Moon towards south and east direction.

To implement this method, there is a spherical coordinate system embedded to the Moon called selenographic coordinates, in which the latitude and longitude components correlate nicely with the Cartesian system needed in camera calibration. Refer to [1], page D4 for more information about selenographic coordinates.

3. Results and Discussions

Approximate values extracted from the data are presented in Table 1. Directions are chosen so that the libration values specify the sub-terrestrial point on the Moon surface, obeying the same convention used in selenographic coordinate system. Table 1. Libration data in September Date 3 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 20 21 22 23 24 26 28 29 30 Time (UTC+7) 21:31 0:15 1:58 1:57 4:35 3:56 4:21 4:03 4:24 18:45 20:27 20:18 19:33 22:18 19:18 1:27 1:34 0:37 Lib. in Lat () -4.2 -1.9 0.8 2.1 3.3 4.4 5.2 5.9 6.1 0.4 -1.5 -3 -4.3 -5.6 -6.4 -6.9 -6.5 -5.8 Lib. in Long () 4.9 2.5 -0.4 -1.7 -3.4 -4.1 -4.7 -4.9 -4.8 0.7 1.7 2.8 3.9 4.2 5.8 4.8 4.7 4.6

Figure 3. Fitting of the libration data in September. Above: libration in latitude. Below: libration in longitude. All date/time are in Local Time (UTC+7).

Libration in longitude occurs due to the difference between the eastwards spin of the Moon yielding negative value to libration, and the westwards orbital movement of the Moons yielding positive value to libration. Neglecting the sun perturbation, the spin can be regarded to be proportional to mean anomaly (M) while the movement of the Moon is expressed in true anomaly (f). The resultant of both satisfying below relation

l (t ) = f (t ) M (t ) , (5)
with index t showing that the values must be taken at the same time. Another dynamic element can be interpreted from libration in longitude is the rate of libration. At any time, we can theoretically derivate l, f, and M to time t

In latitude direction, libration values simply correlate the position of the Moon in regard to the Earth position at the ecliptic, as showed in Figure 2. Hence, the pattern of libration in latitude linearly indicates the inclination and the position of the nodal line. Figure 3 displays the regression plot of the latitude libration data. Without any short of transformations, which is to be discussed later, its obtained the approximate value of = 51.22 and i = 6.4.

dl (t ) d = ( f (t ) M (t )) , dt dt dl (t ) df (t ) = . dt dt

(6)

but the rate of the spin is assumed to be constant (7)

The formula (3) shows that the rate of the spin is equal to the rate of libration at any given time. As known, perigee and apogee happens when the spin rate is maximum and minimum respectively. This is fulfilled with a condition of , and it will eventually revert back to its original form
Figure 2. Latitude libration, inclination and nodal line. The Moons reaches ascending node when the latitude changes from positive to negative. It also shows that inclination and nodal line have nothing to do with longitude libration.

l (t ) = 0 ,

(8)

resulting Tperigee = 20d5h21m and Tapogee= 7d17h45m.

The Tperigee gotten above can be used to complete the Moons orbital relation

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

M (t ) = 360

t T , (9) P

where T is the time at perigee and P is the orbital period of the Moon. Coupled with the relation (1), the values of M and f at any given time can be calculated. Substitute them to Kepler equation

M (t ) = E (t ) e sin E (t ) , (10)

tan

f (t ) 1 + e E (t ) = tan 2 1e 2

(11)

Analytic solutions to E(t) and e is impossible to get, thus equation (9) and (10) had to be solved numerically. With iteration, it is obtained e = 0.023. The last orbital parameter, the argument of perigee = -9.0 is attained by subtracting f(Tp) at perigee by f(t) at ascending node.

Astronomical Almanac for the Year 2012, United States Naval Observatory, Nautical Almanac Office, 2006. Eckhardt, D. H., Moon and Planets, 25, 3. 1981. Hartley, R., Zisserman, A., Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision. Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kaler, J.B., The Ever Changing Sky: A Guide to the Celestial Sphere, Chapter 9, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. Medioni, G. and Kang, S.B., Emerging Topics in Computer Vision, Chapter 2, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2000. Roy, A.E., Orbital Motion, Institute of Physics, Chapter 10, 2005. Shen, R., Cheng, I., Multi-Camera Calibration Using a Globe, In The 8th Workshop on Omnidirectional Vision, Camera Networks and Non-classical Cameras. (Marseille, France 2008).

4. Summary
The approximation values of the five orbital parameters have been derived purely on libration analysis. Table 2 summarizes the results. Table 2. Obtained orbital elements of the Moon Element I e T Value 6.4 0.023 20d5h21m 51.2 -9.0

There are numerous possible sources of the error. The first is the tilt of lunar axis. It is that axis that should be the reference in mean anomaly calculation, not the vertical axis in selenographic coordinates. Second is the observer position on the surface of the Earth, whereas the optical librations should be viewed from the center of the Earth. To get more accurate results, transformation from topographic to geocentric librations is mandatory. Third, as stated before, the mean anomaly itself does not linearly proportional to the libration in longitude. There is non-uniformity in lunar spin rate resulting in minor physical libration. The rest of the error sources would be technical, especially in the implementation of camera calibration regarding the limited points available due to the seeing and the changing phase of the Moon. Apart from the relatively high errors, the results show that the moons libration does indicate something to the orbital parameters, and worth to be looked further, i.e. how to increase the measurement accuracy and to further apply the similar method to other celestial objects. At the meantime, it is this projects objective to negate the detected sources of the errors so that more accurate and acceptable results can be achieved.

References