Contents


        1 AROUND AND AROUND
The Importance of Being Lucrezio / Eccentric Kepler / Tyge the Astrologer / Newton Shoulders /  Perturbations  / Drawing Orbits / Neptune’s Karma / Planets on a Diet / Gone with the Tides /
The opening of the book pays tribute to the celebrated Latin poet Lucrezio describing in his “De Rerum Natura” the principle of relative motion. Some basic celestial mechanics follows: Kepler’s laws runling orbital motion, gravitation and its many consequences.

       2  THREE BODIES AND NO SOLUTION
Celestial Mechanics get the Blues / Lagrange in Equilibrium / Periodic Solutions / Mapping Chaos / KAM and All That / Inside the Rings of Saturn / A Flash in the Night
What happens when more than two celestial bodies attract each other? Trajectories become more and more complex until chaos enters the scene. The dynamics of the spectacular ring system encircling Saturn provides fascinating astronomical examples. A portrait of Henry Poincaré and of the intriguing events which led to the discovery of chaos is used to explain why his work still represents an enlightening source of inspiration.

        3  CELESTIAL WALTZ
Heavenly Resonances / Commensurable Motions / Greeks and Trojans / Famous Affairs  / The Chance of Chaos / Colombo's egg /
Resonances are the key for understanding the stability and the evolution of dynamical systems. The occurrence of commensurable motions in our Solar System is more frequent than due to chance - from the well known case of Trojan asteroids to the many ring-satellite interactions. Interplanetary probes are also using resonances as an efficient means for reducing fuel consumption.

        4  COSMIC SPINNING TOPS
Spin and Orbit / The Dark Side of the Moon / Tidal Frictions / Geostationary Satellites / A Portrait of Mercury / Tidy Chaos / The Obliquity of the Planets / Raiders of the Lost Equinoxes / Is the Land of Atlantis really lost? / Astronology
The coupling between the rotation of a celestial body and its orbital motion has widespread consequences for celestial mechanics. Stable synchronous (Moon-like) rotation is very common among natural satellites, while the chaotic behaviour of the obliquity of a planet drives the long-term evolution of the climate, thus being responsible of the development of life. As concerning the Earth, the precession of the equinoxes and its consequences is used for riding the lost celestial mechanics in search of the ancient civilization which invented the constellations, until a possible explanation of the myth of Atlantis is found.

         5  OUR CHAOTIC SOLAR SYSTEM
The Ubiquity of Chaos / Propagating Orbits / Planets in Numbers / The Stability of the Solar System / Close Encounters / Raining Comets /  The long Journey of Meteorites / Jurassic Asteroids /
Chaos is a leading field of study for modern planetary science. In the last two decades it has provided the long-sought answer to many astronomical problems, as for example the origin of meteorites and of the near-Earth asteroids, the source region for periodic comets and the strange orbit of Pluto.

        6  SINGULARITIES, COLLISIONS AND THREATENING BODIES
From Zero to Infinity / Collisions in the Solar System / Astroblames / Near Earth Asteroids / Impact Probability / Don’t Panic / Mitigation /
When the distance between two celestial bodies appearing at the denominator of Newton’s law goes to zero, mathematically speaking we are dealing with a singularity. Whenever the relative distance between two celestial bodies becomes less than the sum of their radii, then a collision occurs. The consequences of these two definitions are explained in detail: the treatment of singularities as well as the mitigation strategies developed for avoiding a catastrophic impact on our planet.

        7  OF MOON AND MAN
The Cycles of Selene / Acts of the Gods  / Eclipsed by the Saros / Lunar Theories / Holidays in Elatina / Moonshadows / Ways to the Moon /
The Moon has followed in many respects the evolution of mankind: science, religion, myths and legends often end up in focusing on our satellite. Celestial mechanics explains why and how the apparently simple motion of the Moon (Newton is reported to have said it made his head ache) had influence on the birth and the development of life on our planet: from the modern interpretation of ancient eclipse prediction cycles to the recent discovery of the Moon stabilizing effect on the Earth’s rotation.
 

        8  ROCK AROUND THE PLANETS
Space in Flight / Orbiting the Earth / Space Debris / The Accessibility of Celestial Bodies / Going Deep Space / Highways to the Planets / Last but not Least /
Spaceflight dynamics does not only represents an “engineering” application of celestial mechanics: in the years following the beginning of the space era it has grown as a self-standing discipline. Its success is witnessed by the great variety of orbital patterns now confidently followed by the artificial satellites orbiting our planet as well as by the deep space probes exploring the Solar System. With unavoidable side-effects such as the overcrowding of the near-Earth space with orbiting debris.


        9  LORDS OF THE RINGS
Ringed Worlds / Forbidden Regions / Jovian Halos / Sightseeing Saturn / Elliptic rings / Arcs in the Skies / One  upon a ring
Four hundred years of observations, from Galileo Galilei to the Voyager and Cassini missions, allow a comparative analysis of the ring systems surrounding the outer planets. Although their extension and composition significantly differs from planet to planet, celestial mechanics represents the common driving force for explaining their present appearance.

       10  AT THE  EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Beyond Pluto / Smiley and the Others / Big Brothers are Watching Us / Chiron and the Centaurs / Planet X /
Understanding the nature of the transneptunian objects (TNO) represents the last frontier of planetary science, In the ten years spent since the discovery of the first TNO the population has grown sufficiently enough to allow a preliminary characterization from a dynamical point of view. The feeling is that we are only at the beginning of a long path eventually leading to bridging the gap between the last of the planets and the distant Oort cloud.

       11  ON THE ROAD TO EXOLIFE
Beyond the Solar System / Hunting for Exoplanets / A Galactic Zoo / Astrobiology / Back to the Future /
The XIX.th century great expectations on the existence of evolved life forms in the Solar System have not been confirmed by the images sent back by interplanetary probes. Yet at the end of the XX.th century the detection of planets around other stars has extended the traditional domain of celestial mechanics opening new perspectives for the quest of life in the Universe.


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