Book Description

In this classic text, a Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist presents the theory of stellar dynamics as a branch of classical dynamics--a discipline in the same general category as celestial mechanics. His method offers the advantages of clarifying the theory's fundamental issues and defining its underlying motivations. S. Chandrasekhar investigates two areas. The first concerns problems in which the time of relaxation of a stellar system is central. His method consists of analyzing the effects of stellar encounters in terms of the two-body problem of classical dynamics and applying this theory to the dynamics of star clusters. The second area investigates problems centering around Liouville's theorem and the solutions of the equation of continuity; here, the author discusses the dynamic implications of the existence of a field of differential motions, which appears to be the most striking kinematic feature of the galaxy and the extragalactic systems. This edition includes two papers by the author that were published after Principles of Stellar Dynamics and that have been studied and quoted extensively: "New Methods in Stellar Dynamics" (originally published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) and "Dynamical Friction" (originally published in The Astrophysical Journal).