Motion near total collapse in the planar isosceles three-body problem

We describe in detail the qualitative behavior of solutions of the planar isosceles problem which come close to triple collision. Using a method of McGehee, one may describe a neighborhood of triple collision for any mass ratios. For sufficiently small mass ratios, we exhibit infinitely many distinct periodic and collision/ejection solutions of this problem.Partially supported by N.S.F. Grant MCS 81-01855.Paper presented at the 1981 Oberwolfach Conference on Mathematical Methods in Celestial Mechanics.