Abstract
Celestial mechanics, the study of motions of celestial bodies, together with spherical astronomy, was the main branch of astronomy until the end of the 19th century, when astrophysics began to evolve rapidly. The primary task of classical celestial mechanics was to explain and predict the motions of planets and their satellites. Several empirical models, like epicycles and Kepler's laws, were employed to describe these motions. But none of these models explained why the planets moved the way they did. It was only in the 1680’s that a simple explanation was found for all these motons — Newton’s law of universal gravitation. In this chapter, we will derive some properties of orbital motion. The physics we need for this is simple indeed, Just Newton’s laws. (For a review, see *Newton’s Laws, p. 124)
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Further Reading
Brouwer, Clemence: Methods of Celestial Mechanics, Academic Press 1960.
Danby: Fundamentals of Celestial Mechanics,MacMillan 1962; 2nd ed. Willman-Bell, 3rd revised and enlarged printing 1992.
Goldstein: Classical Mechanics,Addison-Wesley 1950.
Roy: Orbital Motion,John Wiley and Sons 1978; 3rd ed. Institute of Physics Publishing 1988, reprinted 1991,1994.
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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Karttunen, H., Kröger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen, M., Donner, K.J. (2003). Celestial Mechanics. In: Karttunen, H., Kröger, P., Oja, H., Poutanen, M., Donner, K.J. (eds) Fundamental Astronomy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05333-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-05333-1_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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