Timelines of Solar System Gravity

In sci.astro message eaaf4727-e508-4192-90a1-3d17cf01108c@googlegroups.
com, Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:05:46, Peter Riedt
posted:


1760’s: Euler studies the general problem of three bodies under mutual gravitation.


He did a lot of that. Note that E.327, "De motu rectilineo ... " is
only one dimensional.

Note that the Three-Body Problem has at least three aspects, which must
be carefully distinguished :-

* The sought-for fully-general solution, in closed algebraic form,
* Special cases such as Sun-Earth-Moon, where one largely deals with the
deviation of the tertiary path from an ellipse, bu approximations,
* Special initial conditions exactly yielding the Lagrange Points.

I recommend reading the Lagrange/d'Alembert correspondence, say from
Number 80 up to year 1775. Their mutual respect and politeness is a
delight to see, as theip potent, but not vulgar, scorn for the
contemporary activities of Leonhard Euler.

--
(c) John Stockton, near London.
Web http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/ - FAQish topics, acronyms, and links.