Celestial Mechanics

The present study generalizes the mapping method of Wisdom (1982) to encompass all gravitational n-body problems with a dominant central mass. The rationale for the generalized mapping method is discussed as well as details for the mapping for the…

All four giant planets in the Solar system possess irregular satellites, characterized by large, highly eccentric and/or inclined orbits that are distinct from the nearly circular, uninclined orbits of the regular satellites. This difference can be…

We investigate a new theory of the origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets: capture of one member of a ~100-km binary asteroid after tidal disruption. The energy loss from disruption is sufficient for capture, but it cannot deliver…

More than 90 irregular moons of the Jovian planets have recently been discovered. These moons are an enigmatic part of the solar system inventory. Their origin, which is intimately linked with the origin of the planets themselves, has yet to be…

We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating overdensities to…

Libraries of stellar spectra are fundamental tools for the study of stellar populations, and both empirical and synthetic libraries have been used for this purpose. In this paper, a new library of high resolution synthetic spectra is presented,…

We review the observations of extrasolar planets, ongoing developments in theories of planet formation, orbital migration, and the evolution of multiplanet systems.

From the reviews of the third edition: "The author defines astrodynamics as 'the study of the motion of man-made objects in space, subject to both natural and artificially induced forces' . This valuable reference text should be on the bookshelf of…

Planets that orbit their parent star at less than about one astronomical unit (1 AU is the Earth-Sun distance) are expected to be engulfed when the star becomes a red giant. Previous observations have revealed the existence of post-red-giant host…

Prior to the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission, little was known about Eros except for its orbit, spin rate, and pole orientation, which could be determined from ground-based telescope observations. Radar bounce data provided a rough…

Exoplanets are often found with short periods or high eccentricities, and multiple-planet systems are often in resonance. They require dynamical theories that describe more extreme motions than those of the relatively placid planetary orbits of the…

The irregular satellites of the outer planets, whose population now numbers over 100, are likely to have been captured from heliocentric orbit during the early period of solar system history. They may thus constitute an intact sample of the…

The locations of the fully despun, double synchronous end states of tidal evolution are derived for spherical components. With the exception of nearly equal-mass binaries, binary asteroid systems are in the midst of lengthy tidal evolutions, far…

The study of the origin of irregular satellites remains important in planetary science because it provides constraints on the formation process of giant planets and probes the properties of a now-extinct planetesimal disk that existed at 5-30 AU…

We examine the nonlinear stability of the Wisdom-Holman (WH) symplectic mapping applied to the integration of perturbed, highly eccentric (eZ0.9) two-body orbits. We Ðnd that the method is unstable and introduces artiÐcial chaos into the computed…

In this paper we apply a new technique alternative to the numerically computed Lyapunov Characteristic Number (LCN) for studying the dynamical behaviour of planetary systems in the framework of the gravitational N-body problem. The method invented…

Estimating errors is a crucial part of any scientific analysis. Whenever a parameter is estimated (model-based or not), an error estimate is necessary. Any parameter estimate that is given without an error estimate is meaningless. Nevertheless, many…

We go through the many considerations involved in fitting a model to data, using as an example the fit of a straight line to a set of points in a two-dimensional plane. Standard weighted least-squares fitting is only appropriate when there is a…

This review discusses Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) in the astrophysical context, with a focus on inviscid gas dynamics. The particle-based SPH technique allows an intuitive and simple formulation of hydrodynamics that has excellent…

We present the three main mathematical constructs used to represent the attitude of a rigid body in three- dimensional space. These are (1) the rotation matrix, (2) a triple of Euler angles, and (3) the unit quaternion. To these we add a fourth, the…