Highly recommended: Astronomical Algorithms, by Jean Meeus, available through

Also on reserve at Evans Library:

Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems, by Jerry B. Marion; later editions were with Stephen T. Thornton. If you haven't taken the prerequisite PHY 3009 (Physical Mechanics) or a similar course, and still somehow got into this course, I strongly recommend you read the chapter on central-force motion, and work the problems.

Orbital Motion, by Archie Roy. Intermediate-level and not bad. Good coverage of natural orbital phenomena, e.g. in binary stars.

An Introduction to the Mathematics and Methods of Astrodynamics, by Richard H. Battin. A heavy tome.

Orbital Mechanics, by Tom Logdson. Not exactly light reading, but perhaps best for ideas and examples.

Course Web page: http://www.astro.fit.edu/ringwald/sps3030.html

Course plan (updated March 17):

Course grades will be awarded for the following:

Homework:	30%
Midterm Exams, which will take the whole 75-minute class periods on Thursday, February 16, and Thursday, April 1:	30% (15% each)
Class participation, including handing in the survey forms:	5%
Term project, due at the beginning of the last session of class, Thursday, April 29, at 3:15 p.m.:	10%
Final Exam, which will be comprehensive, on Friday, May 7, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., in S507 Crawford (the regular classroom):	25%

Please note:

• Term projects: A tentative project title (you're allowed to change your mind if you later discover something better: this is something I like particularly about science), with a typed or printed short (between 200- and 300-word) summary of your project, will be due at the beginning of class on March 25. These projects should be quantitative, preferably involving programming, in whatever computer language you feel comfortable working in. Possible projects might include trajectories for ion-drive or solar sail spacecraft, complex trajectories such as those for Galileo or ICE by Bob Farquhar, or unusual ones such as for space observatories in libration-point orbits, asteroid or comet probes, Ulysses, or Solar Probe. Other ideas for projects might include the dynamics of satellite tethers, satellite geodesy, high-precision ephemerides for planetary motion such as those used at JPL, station-keeping for geosynchronous satellites, or many-body theory and galactic dynamics. Determining asteroid or comet orbits with Laplace's method, Gauss's method, or the routines in Meeus's book, with an arbitrarily large set of observations, would be particularly useful to me. Also interesting would be Project Intercept, from BMW (pp. 445-447). Write-ups should be 3-5 pages, or longer.

• A late penalty of -20% per day will be deducted from any assignments not turned in by 5:00 p.m. on the specified day.

• Please read the chapters before class. Class time is valuable: it is much better spent in informed, active discussion among all of us than in just me talking. Asking questions is also part of active discussion. Please don't be shy about asking questions in class, or during office hours.

• All work that students turn in as their own must really be their own. Proper credit and attribution of one's sources is so important in science, as well as in other fields. I will allow students to collaborate with each other on homework assignments, provided everyone lists their "co-investigators" on their papers. Scientists often do this, and the ability to collaborate well and work as part of a team is a good skill to have, in science and in most other professions.

  However, if you do collaborate on homework, it must be genuine collaboration: not one person doing all the work, and the others blindly copying. That's cheating! Cheating and plagiarism are very serious matters, and the worst possible things for science. What's the point of doing science, creating new knowledge about the Universe, if it isn't honest? My students, of course, wouldn't do that!

• I expect to use e-mail extensively to communicate with you, and please feel free to send e-mail to me. However, all assignments, including homeworks, paper titles and summaries, and papers, must be handed in as hardcopies at the beginning of the class periods in which they are due. Some may think this is rough on trees, but surely, aren't trees a renewable resource? One can plant new trees!

  (One can recycle paper, too, but it would be a good idea for you to hang onto all copies of all work you have done in all your classes, ever. They'll be a big help if, one day, you find yourself teaching a class like this.)

• I also plan to use the World Wide Web extensively in this course. I will require you to know how to use an Internet browser and how to use e-mail. Most students will already know this, but if you don't, don't be embarrassed. Please let me know: I'd be glad to give you private lessons during my office hours (MW 2-5). Although it would be a big advantage for your schoolwork, you need not own a computer, since you may use the computers on the ground floor of Evans Library, the Harris lab (on the second floor of Crawford) and in Q7 (although most machines there have text-only screens).

  If Web access is still a problem for you, please come to office hours (MW 2-5) or make an appointment, and I'll let you use my machine. I won't therefore accept excuses such as "I couldn't use the Internet" or "My browser wasn't Java enabled." This last one was sprung on me last semester. The shame is that, if you can run Netscape, you can run Java: just pull down the menu and select "Enable Java"...

• Sorry, but I do NOT give makeups for midterm exams, only for final exams. Even then I don't like to: I can never be sure that a makeup was really fair, since it must be different from the regular exam. If you should have to miss a midterm exam for a good reason, I will void the part of the course grade that midterm would have counted and count the rest of the grade as 100%. Job interviews or illness documented by a doctor's note are good reasons. Athletic events, theatrical or musical performances, visiting relatives, or the surf being up are not good reasons for missing exams, or classes.

• Florida Tech will not allow me to post grades, not even with names removed for privacy, nor to release grades over the phone. If you want to know your grade, please consult the PAWS Web page. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait until the grade reports are mailed to you. Sorry!

Some general principles:

Quotes from People Who Really Should Have Known Better...


Some Rules and Hints for Teachers and Students


I'd like to encourage you all to participate in outside activities that help your careers. I will focus this class on current topics of interest and problems in Solar System science, particularly those you may find yourselves working on in the coming years. Another way to keep up with what's happening now that's quite painless, and is in fact fun and interesting, is to read the same popular magazines mentioned above, including Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Mercury, The Planetary Report, New Scientist, Physics Today, and Scientific American. Although I recommend it, you need not subscribe to them: Evans Library should have subscriptions to all.

Skycalc:

Skycalc is a most useful astronomical almanac calculator by Prof. John Thorstensen, my former Ph.D. thesis advisor. Please don't e-mail Prof. Thorstensen: if you have questions or problems with this software, contact me.

Some links of interest:

Astrodynamic Constants and Parameters, by the Solar System Dynamics Group

Planetary Fact Sheets, by the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC)

The big list of current, planned, and past missions, maintained by NASA's

My very own UNIX primer. I strongly recommend you learn UNIX, since almost no one in

Three sources of space news:

NASA Space Science News. Subscribe for free, if you like.

Jonathan's Space Report

FLORIDA TODAY Space Online's Space Today

So, you want to walk on the Moon?

Astronomy magazine article by me,

My own mandatory Big Page of Links!

Florida Institute of Technology Astronomical Society (FITAS): I strongly encourage you

Constants and Equations for Calculations, from what used to be the sci.space FAQ, and is

The Basics of Spaceflight Learners' Workbook, by Dave Doody and George Stephan at JPL.

The Slingshot Effect: How spacecraft accelerate in planetary flybys