"Theory of Orbits" treats celestial mechanics as well as stellar dynamics from the common point of view of orbit theory, making use of concepts and techniques from modern geometric mechanics. It starts with elementary Newtonian mechanics and ends with the dynamics of chaotic motion. The two volumes are meant for students in astronomy and physics alike. Prerequisite is a physicist's knowledge of calculus and differential geometry.

Half a century ago, S. Chandrasekhar wrote these words in the preface to his 1 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. [ ... ] 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).

Whilst the first volume treats the classical theory, this second one is the first book on stellar dynamics that presents modern chaos dynamics and its applications to astronomical problems to the students Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Zusammenfassung
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

Inhalt

6. Classical Perturbation Theory in Celestial Mechanics. The Equations of Planetary Motion.- 7. Canonical Perturbation Theory.- 8. Lie Transform Perturbation Theory.- 9. The Theory of Adiabatic Invariants.- 10. Periodic Orbits and Resonances.- 11. Chaos.- 12. Numerical Experiments.- Bibliographical Notes.- Name Index.- Corrections to Volume 1.