Re: orbital elements

On Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:13:34 GMT, pausch@xxxxxxx (Paul Schlyter) wrote:

I do orbital analysis all the time, and I never use calculus. You only
need that if you want to derive the equations. Just determining orbital
elements from observations requires nothing more than vector algebra.

In principle true, but I find it helpful to have some idea of what
I'm actually doing...... :-)

Actually, even the derivations of most of the equations used for orbital
analysis don't require much calculus. And what little there is can be
understood conceptually without needing to actually know the
methodology. There's no reason the OP can't understand the concepts
behind the analysis, and then actually perform the analysis, without
having much in the way of practical calculus skills.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
.