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Astrophysics Part 1 Notes

This document defines and describes various astronomical terms: - Stars can be single, binary, main sequence undergoing fusion, or neutron stars. Nebulae and planetary nebulae are clouds of dust and gas. - Distances in the universe are vast, with a light year being how far light travels in a year, around 9 trillion kilometers. - Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of a nearby star against distant ones as Earth orbits the sun, allowing distance measurement. However, parallax is too small to measure for very distant stars. - A star's luminosity is its total power output, while its brightness as seen from Earth depends on luminosity and distance, with brightness decreasing with the inverse square of distance.

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431 views3 pages

Astrophysics Part 1 Notes

This document defines and describes various astronomical terms: - Stars can be single, binary, main sequence undergoing fusion, or neutron stars. Nebulae and planetary nebulae are clouds of dust and gas. - Distances in the universe are vast, with a light year being how far light travels in a year, around 9 trillion kilometers. - Stellar parallax is the apparent shift of a nearby star against distant ones as Earth orbits the sun, allowing distance measurement. However, parallax is too small to measure for very distant stars. - A star's luminosity is its total power output, while its brightness as seen from Earth depends on luminosity and distance, with brightness decreasing with the inverse square of distance.

Uploaded by

Mannav Israni
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Single star: A luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity.

Binary star: Two stars orbiting a common center.


Black hole: A singularity in space-time.
Clusters of galaxies: Two or more galaxies that are close enough to each other to
affect each other through gravitation.
Constellation: A pattern of stars visible from Earth that are not gravitational bounded.
Galaxies: stars, gas, and dust held together by gravitational forces.
Main sequence star: A normal star that is undergoing nuclear fusion of hydrogen into
helium.
Neutron stars: A very dense star, consisting only of uncharged neutrons. Nebula: A
cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases.
Planet: A celestial body that orbits a star.
Planetary system: Gravitationally bounded non-stellar objects in orbit around
a star or star system.
Planetary nebula: The ejected envelope of a red giant star.
Stellar clusters: A group of stars gravitationally bounded together.

 The nature of stars


The stability of a star depends on the equilibrium between two opposing forces. The
equilibrium depends on the gravitation which can collapse the star and the radiation
pressure which can make the star expand. This equilibrium is gained through nuclear
fusion which provides the energy the star needs to keep it hot so that the star’s
radiation pressure is high enough to oppose gravitational contraction.

Apart from single stars like the Sun, there are many types of stars in our universe.
 Astronomical distances
Our universe is composed of mostly empty space with occasional encounters of
matter apart large distances.

A light year is a unit of measurement of ultra-solar system distances. It’s the distance
travelled by light in one year. The speed of light is 3*10^8m/s. You can find out the
number of seconds in a year by multiplying the number of seconds in a minute (60)
by the number of minutes in an hour (60), then multiplying that by the number of
hours in a day (24) and multiplying that by the number of days in a year
(approximately 365.25). One light year is thus approximately equivalent to 9.46 x
10^15m, which is also approximately equivalent to 0.3068 parsecs (pc).

 Stellar parallax and its limitations


Stellar parallax is a term used to describe the distance between two objects in
space. When an observer on Earth photographs a relatively nearby star against a
background of distant stars on two different occasions six months apart, the target
star image will appear to have shifted against the more distant stellar background.

The baseline shift of the observer on Earth is 2 astronomical units (AU). By


convention, calculations are normalized to one AU, the radius of the Earth’s orbit, so
one half of the measured shift in apparent position is deemed the “parallax” of the
target.

A parallax of one arcsecond is called a parsec. Since we know, the radius of the
Earth’s orbit, simple Euclidean geometry allows us to calculate that a star exhibiting
a one arcsecond shift is 3.26 light years or one parsec away from Earth.

However, if a star is too far away from Earth, its parallax will be too small to be
measured with accuracy.

 Luminosity and apparent brightness


The total power radiated by a star in all directions is known as its luminosity and the
SI unit for luminosity is watts ( W ). When you compare this to the power received by
an observer on the Earth, you can see that the two quantities are quite different. The
power received per unit is known as the star’s brightness and this is measured in
watts per metre squared (W/m^2).

If two stars were at the same distance from Earth, the one that had the greatest
luminosity would also have the greatest brightness. However, because stars are at
different distances from the Earth, their brightness will depend on the luminosity as
well as the distance from Earth. The luminosity of a star will decrease with distance
according to the inverse square law.

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