The Workshop on Chaos in Gravitational N -Body Systems was held in La Plata, Argentina, from July 31 through August 3, 1995. The School of Astronomy and Geophysics of La Plata National University, best known as La Plata Observatory, was the host institution. The Observatory (cover photo) was founded in 1883, and it has nowadays about 120 faculty members and 70 non-faculty members devoted to teaching and research in different areas of astronomy and geophysics. It was very nice to see how many people, from young students to well recognized authorities in the field, came to participate in the meeting. This audience success was due to the increasing understanding of the neces sity to gather together people from Celestial Mechanics and Stellar Dynamics to explore the problems that exist at the frontier of these two disciplines and their common interest in chaotic phenomena and integrability (the famous Argentine beef was, certainly, also an attraction!). All the papers of the present volume were refereed. Most were accepted after some revision, while some needed no change at all (compli ments to their authors!) and, sadly, a few could not be included. About half a dozen authors did not submit their contributions for publication, mainly because they were already in print elsewhere. Therefore, the special issue of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy includes all the invited lectures of the workshop, while the proceedings volume includes those same lectures plus the bulk of, but Bot all, the contributions to the meeting.

Based on the recent NATO Advanced Study Institute "Chaotic Worlds: From Order to Disorder in Gravitational N-Body Dynamical Systems", this state of the art textbook, written by internationally renowned experts, provides an invaluable reference volume for all students and researchers in gravitational n-body systems. The contributions are especially designed to give a systematic development from the fundamental mathematics which underpin modern studies of ordered and chaotic behaviour in n-body dynamics to their application to real motion in planetary systems. This volume presents an up-to-date synoptic view of the subject.

The reader will find in this volume the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute held in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy between August 6 and August 17, 1990 under the title "Predictability, Stability, and Chaos in N-Body Dynamical Systems". The Institute was the latest in a series held at three-yearly inter vals from 1972 to 1987 in dynamical astronomy, theoretical mechanics and celestial mechanics. These previous institutes, held in high esteem by the international community of research workers, have resulted in a series of well-received Proceedings. The 1990 Institute attracted 74 participants from 16 countries, six outside the NATO group. Fifteen series of lectures were given by invited speakers; additionally some 40 valuable presentations were made by the younger participants, most of which are included in these Proceedings. The last twenty years in particular has been a time of increasingly rapid progress in tackling long-standing and also newly-arising problems in dynamics of N-body systems, point-mass and non-point-mass, a rate of progress achieved because of correspondingly rapid developments of new computer hardware and software together with the advent of new analytical techniques. It was a time of exciting progress culminating in the ability to carry out research programmes into the evolution of the outer Solar 8 System over periods of more than 10 years and to study star cluster and galactic models in unprecedented detail.

A primer for researchers and graduate students; introduces and applies chaos techniques to specific astrophysical systems.

The Restless Universe: Applications of Gravitational N-Body Dynamics to Planetary Stellar and Galactic Systems stimulates the cross-fertilization of ideas, methods, and applications among the different communities who work in the gravitational N-body problem arena, across diverse fields of astrophysics. The chapters and topics cover three broad the

The conference 'Chaos in Astronomy' was held in Athens on 17-20 Sept. 2007. This book contains edited refereed contributions. It offers an overview to students and newcomers entering various fields of dynamical astronomy.

This is the first monograph dedicated entirely to problems of stability and chaotic behaviour in planetary systems and its subsystems. The author explores the three rapidly developing interplaying fields of resonant and chaotic dynamics of Hamiltonian systems, the dynamics of Solar system bodies, and the dynamics of exoplanetary systems. The necessary concepts, methods and tools used to study dynamical chaos (such as symplectic maps, Lyapunov exponents and timescales, chaotic diffusion rates, stability diagrams and charts) are described and then used to show in detail how the observed dynamical architectures arise in the Solar system (and its subsystems) and in exoplanetary systems. The book concentrates, in particular, on chaotic diffusion and clearing effects. The potential readership of this book includes scientists and students working in astrophysics, planetary science, celestial mechanics, and nonlinear dynamics.