AN INTRODUCTORY TREATISE ON DYNAMICAL ASTRONOMY BY H. C. PLUMMER, M.A. LATE PROFESSOR OF ASTRONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN AND ROYAL ASTRONOMER OF IRELAND DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC. NEW YORK uA Lib.All rights reserved Published im the United Kingdom by Con- stable and Company Limited, 10 Orange Street, London WC 2 This new Dover edition, first published in 1960, 18 an unabridged and unaltered repubh- cation of the work originally published in 1918 This edition 1s published by special arrange- ment wath the Cambridge University Press, the origmal publisher of the work Manufactured m the United States of America Dover Publications, Ine 180 Varick Street: New York 14, NYPREFACE Trans book is intended to provide an introduction to those parte of Astronomy which require dynamical treatment To cover the whole of this wide sub- ject, evan m 2 pralimimary way, within the of a angle moderate size would be mamfestly impossible Thus the treatment of bodies of definite shape and of deformable bodies 1s entirely excluded, and hence no reference will be found to problems of geodesy or the many aspects of tidal theory Already the study of stellar motions 1s bringing the methods of statistical mevhaies iio use for wsicunouncal purposes, but this development 18 both too recent and too distinct in ats subject-matter to find s place here, Nevertheless the book covers a wider range of subyect than has been usual in works of the kind Thereby two advantages may be gained For the reader is spared the repetition of very much the same introductory matter which would be necessary if the different branches of the subject were taken up separately, But in the second place, and this is more important, he will ‘see these branches in due relation to one another and will realize better that he 1s dealing not with several distinct problems but with different parts of what 28 essentially a single problem. In an mtroductory work :t therefore seemed dearable to make the scope as wide as was compatible with reason- able unity of method, the more so on account of the almost complete absence of miler works in the Enghsh language. The first six chapters are devoted to preliminary matters, chiefly connected with the undisturbed motion of two bodies. These are followed by five chapters VII to XI dealing with the determination of orbite. This section is intended to farmbarize the reader with the properties of undisturbed motion by explaining in general terms the most important and interesting applica- tions, It win no sense complete and is not intended to replace those works which are enturely devoted to this subject. Otherwise it would have been necessary to describe in detail such admirably effective methods os Professor ‘Leuechner‘a and to include fully worked numerical examples, Here, as else- where, the aim has been to give such an account of principles as will be