Feb. Membership Meeting

Title:    Stellar Dynamics and the n-Body Problem.

Abstract:

When we look at the stars in the night sky and correct for the dynamic effect caused by Earth's daily rotation and our orbit around the Sun, almost all of the stars look like they don't move.   Of course, there are a few well known examples of moving stars (they're not movie stars), the most famous being Barnards' star which I spoke about at my previous talk.  In this talk, I will show how, over thousands of years, all stars move a significant amount.   I'll show some dynamics that I was able to code using highly accurate data from the Gaia mission.  I will also discuss new discoveies of period solutions to the n-Body problem.  It is know that when two stars orbit each other, that orbital dynamic is stable over time.   But, when it's more than…