Abstract
A formula is derived for the dynamical friction experienced by an object which is travelling in an arbitrary mass density field, assuming that the object's mass much exceeds that of a background particle, and that the background is stationary and is described by a global Maxwellian velocity distribution. This work extends a recent study which relates dynamical friction to the interaction of the object with background fluctuations in an infinite homogeneous medium. The new approach has some limitations, but it still provides a better estimate for the friction in nonhomogeneous media than does Chandrasekhar's formula. The drag no longer depends only on local background characteristics as in the homogeneous case, but is a function of the global structure of the entire mass density field
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