Effects on the nutation of the non-zonal harmonics of third degree

Abstract

In this paper, we calculate the coefficients of the nutation for a rigid Earth model due to the C-3m and S-3m (m not equal 0) harmonics of the geopotential, starting from the Hamiltonian theory as developped by Kinoshita (1977). We show that these coefficients are far from bring negligible as given the level of truncation of 0.1 mu as which is necessary in the reconstruction of the tables of nutation, and also that their value is very close to that given by Bretagnon st al. (1997).