Overview

Modern celestial mechanics began with the application of Isaac Newton's laws of motion to the observations of astronomy. Mathematicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries worked to understand the workings of the solar system in terms of all its gravitational forces. While the gravitational pull of the Sun keeps the planets in their orbits, each planet's path is slightly disturbed by the presence of the others.

Background

Early astronomy was primarily concerned with celestial mechanics in a broad sense; that is, understanding the apparent motion of the stars and planets. Without telescopes, the Moon was the only celestial body upon which details could be observed. Everything else was too distant, except for the Sun, which was too bright. So theories could be devised about the nature of the other bodies, but the only property that could actually be measured...