craig@ucla-cime.UUCP (Craig Schwartz) (01/27/86)
I have recently become interested in celestial mechanics, & am
trying to learn about calulating orbital positions. Can anyone
suggest a good introduction to the topic, &/or tell me where
I can get the source code for programs that will calculate the
co-ordinates of a body given the orbital elements? . If you have
such program & can send me the code, I'd appreciate it !!
Thanks!
Craig Schwartz
Crump Institute,
{ucla-cs,ucla-an,cepu}!ucla-cime!craigrlp@cbosgd.UUCP (J. Knapp) (02/01/86)
In article <172@ucla-cime.UUCP> craig@ucla-cime.UUCP (Craig Schwartz) writes: > > I have recently become interested in celestial mechanics, & am > trying to learn about calulating orbital positions. Can anyone > suggest a good introduction to the topic, &/or tell me where > I can get the source code for programs that will calculate the > co-ordinates of a body given the orbital elements? . If you have > such program & can send me the code, I'd appreciate it !! > I found a reasonably-priced text titled "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" (Dover 1971) in a mass-market (mall) bookstore. It is intended to serve as a first course in astrodynamics at the US Air Force Academy. The table of contents: ch. 1 Two-Body Orbital Mechanics 2 Orbit Determination from Observations 3 Basic Orbital Maneuvers 4 Position and Velocity as a Function of Time 5 Orbit Determination from Two Positions and Time 6 Ballistic Missile Trajectories 7 Lunar Trajectories 8 Interplanetary Trajectories 9 Perturbations Since it is basically a teaching book, there are plenty of worked examples showing practical applications of the theory. These come in handy for testing computer implementations. Many chapters open with an interesting historical digression. While classical solution techniques are discussed, emphasis is on a method called the "universal variable formulation." Overall, I'd say that there is a lot of material on which to base computer algorithms, but the complexity of the calculations (and therefore the ease of implementation and speed of the programs) is disappointing if you are trying to do real-time simulation. If there are simpler (if approximate) methods I'd be glad to know about them. cbosgd!nscs!jmk