J. Meeus’s scientific contributions

A study of extreme perigees and apogees of the moon is presented. While 0.0549 is the mean value of the moon's orbit eccentricity, it reaches a maximum every 206 days when the major axis of the moon's orbit is directed towards the sun, and a minimum when the major axis of the lunar orbit is at a right angle to the sun, with the variation of perigee distance much larger than that of apogee. The smallest and largest possible values for the distance between the centers of the earth and moon from 1750 through 2125 were calculated, the most extreme perigee being 356,375 km, January 4, 1912, an apogee being 406,720 km, February 3, 2125. Other information was deduced from the resulting table of distances, including the influence of the earth's variable distance to the sun and the saros period.