Lecture Notes*

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*With gratitude to all of those who have discovered errors since this course was offered, including: Daryl Bahls, Warren McNeil, and Charles Werner as well as others who I have certainly forgotten to recognize.


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• Class Syllabus
• List of books for further reading

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• Introduction to Orbital Mechanics
• Review of Partial Derivatives, Gradients, Polar Coordinates (68 K PDF)
• The Gradient in Polar Coordinates (72K PDF)
• Ellipses and Kepler's Equation (36 K PDFs)
• Proof that Newton's Laws lead to Elliptical Orbits (32 K PDF)
• Definition of Kepler Elements and PQW frame (32 K PDF)
• Notes on Rotation Matrices (24 K PDF)
• Conversion between Kepler and Cartesian elements (28 K PDF)
• Derivation of Vis Viva Equation (16 K PDF)
• All of the above in one file (581 K PDF)
• Orbital Mechanics from Math 351 (268 K PDF)

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• Numerical Methods: Newton's Method, Euler's Method, Runge-Kutta(92 K PDF)
• A recipe for a simple orbit propagator that only includes secular (J2) perturbations and drag (44 K PDF)
• Everything you could ever possibly want to know about differential equations, and some more (All my class notes on Differential Equations, Math 351 at CSUN)
• Short flyer about Tourette Syndrome (88 K PDF file)

Mathematica Notes and Notebooks

• Wolfram Mathematica Tutorial (4.5 MB Mathematica Notebook)
• Wolfram Mathematica Tutorial,Version 2 Compatible (1.7 MB Mathematica Notebook)
• Mathematica Notes from 1998 MBL Class (1.5 MB PDF file)
• Some useful orbit calculation functions (44 Kb mathematica notebook) (Uncorrected, may be buggy!)