Theory of Orbits

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XIV

   PDF

2. Introduction — The Theory of Orbits from Epicycles to “Chaos”

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 1-13

3. Dynamics and Dynamical Systems — Quod Satis

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 15-124

4. The Two-Body Problem

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 125-175

5. The N-Body Problem

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 177-235

6. The Three-Body Problem

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 237-299

7. Orbits in Given Potentials

   • Dino Boccaletti, Giuseppe Pucacco

   Pages 301-362

8. Back Matter

   Pages 363-393

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Half a century ago, S. Chandrasekhar wrote these words in the preface to his l celebrated and successful book: In this monograph an attempt has been made to present the theory of stellar dy­ namics as a branch of classical dynamics - a discipline in the same general category as celestial mechanics. [ ... J Indeed, several of the problems of modern stellar dy­ namical theory are so severely classical that it is difficult to believe that they are not already discussed, for example, in Jacobi's Vorlesungen. Since then, stellar dynamics has developed in several directions and at var­ ious levels, basically three viewpoints remaining from which to look at the problems encountered in the interpretation of the phenomenology. Roughly speaking, we can say that a stellar system (cluster, galaxy, etc.) can be con­ sidered from the point of view of celestial mechanics (the N-body problem with N » 1), fluid mechanics (the system is represented by a material con­ tinuum), or statistical mechanics (one defines a distribution function for the positions and the states of motion of the components of the system).

• Celestial mechanics
• Chaotic motion
• Orbits
• Star
• Stellar dynamics
• Three-body problem
• astronomy
• stellar

From the reviews
"The book is ... didactically written and contains topics from classical to most modern ones, treated rigorously by indicating where complete proofs are to be found."
Zentralblatt für Mathematik, 1999

• Dipartimento di Matematica “Guido Castelnuovo”, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”, Roma, Italy

  Dino Boccaletti

• Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Roma, Italy

  Giuseppe Pucacco

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