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Orbital Mechanics & Kepler’s Laws
● Kepler’s Third Law: Used to determine the relationship between a planet’s orbital
period and its distance from the central star.
● Orbital Velocity: Used to find the speed of an object in orbit around a massive body.
● Escape Velocity: Used to calculate the speed needed for an object to break free from a
planet or star’s gravity.
● Energy in an Orbit: Helps determine how much energy a satellite or planet has at a
given distance from its host body.
2. Rotation and Circular Motion
● Centripetal Acceleration: Used to calculate the force needed to keep an object moving
in a circular path.
● Angular Momentum: Useful for studying how objects conserve rotational motion in
space (e.g., planets, stars, and black holes).
● Period of Rotation: Helps determine how fast an object rotates based on its angular
velocity.
3. Stellar Distances
● Parallax Method: Used to determine the distance to nearby stars by measuring their
apparent shift in the sky.
● Spectroscopic Parallax & Distance Modulus: Used for estimating the distances to
stars by comparing their brightness and spectral type.
4. Exoplanet Detection Methods
● Radial Velocity (Doppler Shift): Helps measure how much a star wobbles due to an
orbiting exoplanet, revealing the planet’s mass.
● Transit Method: Used to detect exoplanets by measuring the dip in a star’s brightness
when a planet passes in front of it, helping determine its size.
● Direct Imaging (Angular Separation): Helps calculate how far an exoplanet appears
from its star, which is useful for direct imaging techniques.
5. Radiation Laws & Planetary Temperatures
● Stefan-Boltzmann Law: Used to determine how much energy a star or planet emits
based on its temperature.
● Wien’s Law: Helps find the peak wavelength of radiation emitted by a star or planet,
which is used to estimate its temperature.
● Equilibrium Temperature: Used to estimate a planet’s surface temperature based on
its distance from the star and its reflectivity.
● Habitable Zone Calculation: Determines the range of distances where liquid water
could exist on a planet’s surface, indicating potential habitability.
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