Instructors

Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
University of British Columbia
6224 Agricultural Road
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1Z1

COURSE INFORMATION

AIM: A course in point-mass gravitational dynamics in the context of the Solar System, stellar, galactic, and extragalactic environments.

LEVEL: First year graduate (see prereqs below)
or 4th year honours with the permission of the instructor.

TEXTBOOKS:
- Solar System Dynamics (Burns and Gladman, chapters provided free of charge)
Required:
- Galactic Dynamics. Binney and Tremaine (Princeton University Press). MUST BE 2ND EDITON

Other potentially-useful references (not required):
- Galactic Astronomy. Binney and Merrifield (Princeton University Press)
- Solar System Dynamics. Dermott and Murray.

PREREQUISITES:
- Undergraduate classical mechanics at honours physics level. You should have seen Hamilton's equations of motion.
- Differential equations at honours physics level (PDEs).
- Elementary knowledge of a scientific programming language. Some numerical exploration will be required.

HOURS PER WEEK: Three hours of meetings per week on average.

3 CREDITS : Coursework will consist of assigned readings, discussion, assignments as well as midterm and final examimations.

Course Topics

Unit: CELESTIAL MECHANICS
- Overview of solar system structure
- The 2-body problem
- The restricted 3-body problem
- Numerical techniques
- The N-body problem and dynamical chaos
- Resonances, perturbation equations
- The stability of the solar system
- Extrasolar Planets
  
  * The level of the above topics is as covered in the commonly available:
  Orbital Motion, 3rd Edition.  A.E. Roy  
  Fundmentals of Celestial Mechanics, J.M.A. Danby
  Solar System Dynamics, C.D. Murray and S.F. Dermott

  * The remaining topics are on the scope of the coverage of that topic in:
  Galactic Dynamics, 2nd edition.  J. Binney and S. Tremaine
     Most of the material is in Chapters 1-3, 7 and 8

Unit: GALACTIC/STELLAR DYNAMICS
- The structure of the galaxy
- Galactic kinematics
- Evidence for dark matter
- Dynamical friction
- Dynamics of star clusters

Unit: EXTRAGALACTIC DYNAMICS
- Galactic potentials and orbits
- Dynamics of clusters of galaxies
- Environmental effects

Reading Log

Date	Readings and HW due for THAT DAY OF CLASS.
Jan 11	No readings.              -- none due (HW1 assigned)
Jan 13  Chpt 2 to end of 2.2	  no HW due, HW1 due Jan 18 though

Jan 18	Chapter 1, 2.3		  HW1, HW2(1 problem)
Jan 20  2.4, 2.5		  HW3(1 problem)

Jan 25  2.6, 2.7, 2.8		  HW4
Jan 27	2.9			  --

Feb 1	2.10, 2.11		  HW5
Feb 3	3.1, 3.3		  ---  HW6 and HW7 distributed
  Currently, below is esimate.
Feb 7	3.2, 3.7		  HW6
Feb 9	Sec 3.5.1	 	  HW7
Feb 14  Chpt 4 to end 4.1.3	  -- (but HW8 distributed)
Feb 16  4.2, 4.3, 4.6		  HW8
Feb 28  Chpt 5			  HW9
Mar 2	MIDTERM EXAM		  in class.
Mar 7   Chpt 6 to end of 6.3.5	  none
Mar 9   --	  		  HW10
Mar 14  6.4, 6.5, 7 to end 7.1	  none
Mar 16  8 to end 8.5		  HW11
Now B&T 2nd edition sections/pages
Mar 21	Chpt 2 to end p.66	  HW12
Mar 23  pp 68-71(f,g),p72, 2.3.2  none
Mar 28  2.4, Chpt 3 to end p.149  HW13x (TYPO, 3.6 intended), cancelled
Mar 30  pp 152-156,159-161	  HW13.  Did Sec 2.7 in class, added.
Apr  4  3.3 to end p. 185	  HW14
Apr  6  1.1.2 and 1.2		  HW15

Apr 12  FINAL EXAM, 09:00-11:00 Hennings 309