Adventures in Celestial Mechanics

A fascinating introduction to the basic principles of orbital mechanics

It has been three hundred years since Isaac Newton first formulated laws to explain the orbits of the Moon and the planets of our solar system. In so doing he laid the groundwork for modern science's understanding of the workings of the cosmos and helped pave the way to the age of space exploration.

Adventures in Celestial Mechanics offers students an enjoyable way to become acquainted with the basic principles involved in the motions of natural and human-made bodies in space. Packed with examples in which these principles are applied to everything from a falling stone to the Sun, from space probes to galaxies, this updated and revised Second Edition is an ideal introduction to celestial mechanics for students of astronomy, physics, and aerospace engineering. Other features that helped make the first edition of this book the text of choice in colleges and universities across North America include:
* Lively historical accounts of important discoveries in celestial mechanics and the men and women who made them
* Superb illustrations, photographs, charts, and tables
* Helpful chapter-end examples and problem sets

Customer Reviews:

A Review of "Adventures in Celestial Mechanics"

By A Customer - December 8, 2000

This book is an introduction to celestial mechanics. It assumes some knowledge of calculus and vectors; given the subject matter, an unavoidable assumption. It contains a number of nicely chosen numerical and mathematical examples in each chapter so that the reader can see both application and extension of the results presented in the chapter. Each chapter ends with some problems, without answers, that continue to extend the basics from the main text. Each chapter contains references to books and papers that supplement and extend the subject matter of the chapter. It ends with a glossary, an appendix of physical constants, and an annotated list of books for further reading for the very interested reader. The book list is particularly valuable if the reader wishes to continue learning celestial mechanics; it covers elementary to advanced texts.The first chapter provides a historical review of progress in celestial mechanics with a list of notable (dead) practitioners of... read more

Needs a proof-reader

By Joseph Gangestad - July 14, 2004

I read this book for pleasure as a first introduction to celestial mechanics (I am an astrohypsics major at my college), and found the selected topics coherently explained in comprehensible language. Perhaps more importantly, the mathematics (at least at the beginning) is covered more or less step-by-step - you won't get lost by any "it is therefore obvious..." and then a skip of five or six steps.
Unfortunately - - The books is rife with typos, and nothing so simple as a misspelling. At least every other page (and often several times on one page) an equation would have an exponent or operation error (such no division sign) and references in the explanations to earlier equations were regularly mistaken.
With a few more thorough proof-readings (and some more work on the second half of the book, which whizzes through a topic many times more complicated than the first half but in the same amount of time/pages), this book could easily move up to 5-stars.

AVAILABILITY
Merchant	Format	Price
Amazon US	Paperback	$35.00 - $156.00
eBooks.com	Digital (PDF)	$156.00
BookByte	Paperback	$139.40
eCampus	Paperback	~~$150.79~~ discount!