Celestial n-Body Coupling in the Lunar Orbit Theory

Making use of the fact that, in the solar system, the angular momentum is carried predominantly by the planets while the mass is beared almost entirely by the Sun, an iterative scheme is devised to solve approximately the n-body contributions of the lunar orbit problem. The scheme envisages the Moon-Earth-Sun three-body subsystem as being nested in the grand Earth-Jupiter-Sun system. In the planetocentric representation, the orbital motion of the Sun about the solar system center of mass is transmitted to the third body via the second primary body in both the grand and nested three-body systems. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.