Quote:
Originally Posted by Celestial Mechanic
Wrong. The period for the precession of the equinoxes is almost entirely (99.8 percent) due to the torques of the Sun and Moon on the Earth's equatorial bulge.
For a calculation as elementary as I can make it and present it here, see the precession dialogues:
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, and Part Seven.
The planets have very little effect on the precession of the equinoxes. The fact that at the moment, given the current obliquity, that it equals nearly 144 periods of motion of the solar system barycenter is coincidence and nothing more. |
Everyone knows that the Sun and the Moon are the "mainspring" for driving the Earth's precession. The question is whether Cytherian zyzygies that are in turn calibrated by the Sun's orbit around the SSB might possibly act as an escapement mechanism that could improve the constancy of the precessional period:
That is, the precession might be like a giant gearwheel in the sky with 144 * 112 = 16,128 teeth