Research career of an astronomer who has studied celestial mechanics

• Published in: Research in astronomy and astrophysics Vol. 16; no. 9; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Author: Kozai, Yoshihide
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences and IOP Publishing 01.09.2016
• Subjects: artificial satellite; Asteroids; asteroids: general; Astronomy; Celestial mechanics; Eccentricity; Gravitation; gravitational waves; Inclination; Mathematical analysis; minor planets; occultation; planets and satellites: general; planets and satellites: rings; Professional development; 人造卫星; 偏心值; 动力学; 天体力学; 天文学家; 小行星; 研究生; 行星环
• ISSN: 1674-4527; 2397-6209
• DOI: 10.1088/1674-4527/16/9/133

Celestial mechanics has been a classical field of astronomy. Only a few astronomers were in this field and not so many papers on this subject had been published during the first half of the 20th century. However, as the beauty of classical dynamics and celestial mechanics attracted me very much, I decided to take celestial mechanics as my research subject and entered university, where a very famous professor of celestial mechanics was a member of the faculty. Then as artificial satellites were launched starting from October 1958, new topics were investigated in the field of celestial mechanics. Moreover, planetary rings, asteroids with moderate values of eccentricity, inclination and so on have become new fields of celestial mechanics. In fact I have tried to solve such problems in an analytical way. Finally, to understand what gravitation is I joined the TAMA300 gravitational wave detector group.