Generating Families in the Restricted Three-Body Problem

"Generating Families in the Restricted Three-Body Problem" by Michel Henon is a mathematics book and learning resource focused on Celestial Motion. Best for teachers, students, and readers looking for stronger mathematical understanding.

Topic: Celestial Motion

Author: Michel Henon

Who this is for:

• Teachers and classroom instructors
• Students building subject mastery
• Readers looking for practical learning support

Why this book matters: It stands out as a practical math resource that helps explain concepts, strengthen problem-solving, and support classroom or independent learning.

The classical restricted problem of three bodies is of fundamental importance for its applications to astronomy and space navigation, and also as a simple model of a non-integrable Hamiltonian dynamical system. A central role is played by periodic orbits, of which a large number have been computed numerically. In this book an attempt is made to explain and organize this material through a systematic study of generating families, which are the limits of families of periodic orbits when the mass ratio of the two main bodies becomes vanishingly small. The most critical part is the study of bifurcations, where several families come together and it is necessary to determine how individual branches are joined. Many different cases must be distinguished and studied separately. Detailed recipes are given. Their use is illustrated by determining a number of generating families, associated with natural families of the restricted problem, and comparing them with numerical computations in the Earth-Moon and Sun-Jupiter case.