

Beschreibung
The book "Relativity in Astrometry, Celestial Mechanics and Geodesy" repre sents a significant contribution to modern relativistic celestial mechanics and astrometry. In these branches of astronomy the theory of general relativity is used nowadays as an effici...The book "Relativity in Astrometry, Celestial Mechanics and Geodesy" repre sents a significant contribution to modern relativistic celestial mechanics and astrometry. In these branches of astronomy the theory of general relativity is used nowadays as an efficient practical framework for constructing accurate dynamical theories of motion of celestial bodies and discussing high-precision observations. The author develops the useful tools for this purpose and intro duces the reader into the modern state of the art in these domains. More specifically, the distinctive feature of the book is the wide application of the tetrad formalism to astronomical problems. One may not agree with the author's opinion that this is the only method so far to be able to treat the rel ativistic astronomical problems in a consistent and satisfactory manner. (On the contrary, one may foresee in the nearest future other books on relativistic celestial mechanics and astrometry based on different approaches solving the same problems. ) However, we are now at the beginning of practical relativis tic astronomy and it will demand much effort to reconstruct in a relativistic manner all Newtonian conceptions of ephemeris astronomy and geodesy. In particular, this concern. s the definitions of reference frames, time scales and astronomical units of measurement. This book is one of the first steps in the correct direction. V. A.
Klappentext
This monograph aims to provide the community of people involved in the establishment or use of highly precise spatial-temporal reference frames on earth or in space or interested in the dynamics of gravitationally interacting bodies, with a useful background of general relativity. General relativity is described in not-too-technical language as an integral part of ordinary classical physics and applied to such practical problems as clock synchronization, laser ranging to satellites or reflectors on the Moon, and very long base line interferometry. The present status of measuring techniques and levels of accuracy in the field are reviewed and it is shown how relativity enters the theoretical analysis of measuring data.
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