Questions tagged [luminosity]

Questions regarding the amount of energy produced by an object per unit of time.

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How do I calculate the surface temperature of a star from luminosity? [duplicate]

How do I calculate the surface temperature of a star from luminosity? I've been trying to delve into speculative solar systems for a bit, and I've heard the surface temperature of a star can be ...
bigboi's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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How does the Eddington limit make the gravitational field of stars asymmetric?

This answer to Is the gravitational field of the sun uniform? says: Very large stars are asymmetric due to being close to the Eddington limit. The Sun is too small of a star to have the kind of ...
uhoh's user avatar
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12 votes
1 answer
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Is there a relation between mass, radius, and luminosity in deuterium-burning brown dwarfs?

I'm a worldbuilder and my setting has a lot of brown dwarfs. While I'm trying to keep my setting as science-compliant as possible, I can't seem to find any resources for brown dwarfs like there are ...
TerranAmbassador's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
66 views

Total luminosity of total population of galaxies!

I'm trying to get the total luminosity of a total population of galaxies. I have the Schechter Function like $$\Phi(L) = \frac{\Phi^{*}}{L^{*}} \left(\frac{L}{L^{*}}\right)^{\alpha} \exp \left(\frac{...
Emir Hernandez's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
300 views

Units confusion while calculating flux of a star using distance and luminosity, Python

I am trying to calculate the flux of various stars in Python. I am using the information from a database containing all stars in Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star, and Gliese catalogs (almost 120,000 stars)....
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4 votes
1 answer
3k views

Does the luminosity of a star on its main sequence increase or remain approximately constant?

From my understanding, the luminosity of a main sequence star should increase because, in its core, hydrogen is being burnt into helium which means that the number density of hydrogen decreases and ...
MAXX's user avatar
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12 votes
4 answers
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Visible Stars in Andromeda Galaxy

So when I look at images taken of Andromeda, I see a lot of individual stars. Image by André van der Hoeven It seems to me that the actual individual stars that far away would be too small to ...
Kerry Thomas's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
698 views

What is the most appropriate way to estimate the helium composition of a star?

Say we have to estimate the helium content in Proxima Centauri. We begin by calculating the content of helium in the Sun (source): $24.85$% of $2.10^{30}$ kg. Mostly all the energy is generated due ...
Sunit Gautam's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
1k views

How to convert luminosity at rest frame wavelength of 1450 A to absolute magnitude at 1450 A?

How do I convert the luminosity (erg sec$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1}$) of a quasar at a rest frame wavelength of 1450 Angstroms to absolute magnitude at the same wavelength? I know that the bolometric ...
Arpan Das's user avatar
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What is the spectral energy distribution (SED)?

I see the SED being referred to as several different things and now I am confused about what it actually is and what are its units. In particular, I find the SED Wikipedia page not understandable. ...
Catarina Alves's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
532 views

Convolve a SED with a filter. Is convoluting the mathematical operation?

I know that in order to get the Flux of a star (or something else) in a particular filter from its SED (luminosity per unit wavelength), I need to convolve the spectrum (SED) with the filter response. ...
Catarina Alves's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
166 views

Can a star emit a larger fraction of its total light in the visual range than the Sun does

If one sets both the bolometric and visual luminosity of the Sun to 1 (and use a linear scale), can a star then have a higher visual than bolometric luminosity? It makes sense that this will not be ...
SE - stop firing the good guys's user avatar
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26 views

Relationship between IMF and time spent during an evolutionary phase

I was reading a little about stellar evolution and was wondering whether there was any relationship between the lifetime of an evolutionary phase and the IMF, I searched on google but all I found were ...
Hrsht's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Formula to calculate B-V index? [duplicate]

Is there a formlua or equation to calculate a star's B-V index based on it's observed frequencies in the B and V spectrums ? I have unfortunately not been able to find anything...
A.D's user avatar
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Finding the solar radius from temperature and luminosity

This question has eluded me for days; I can't seem to solve it. A certain star has a temperature twice that of the Sun and a luminosity 55 times greater than the solar value. What is its radius, in ...
liamwpope's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Estimating a star's radius, temperature, and luminosity based on its mass

(See updated figure and description below.) I've been trying to generate ballpark estimates for the radius, temperature and luminosity of stars in the main sequence based solely on their masses (...
Bryan Wright's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
106 views

How Wide Would the Habitable Zone Be in a Singular Red Giant System?

Astrobiologists looking for signs of life outside Earth usually take excitement over planets orbiting red giant stars because a larger, brighter star usually means a farther-away but still wider ...
JohnWDailey's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Why is the Sun's Luminosity not equal to the Zero Point Luminosity?

I was doing some research and found that the zero-point luminosity was $L_\odot = 3.75\times 10^{28} $, while the sun's reported luminosity was $L_{Sun} = 3.828\times 10^{26}$, according to Wikipedia. ...
Anurag's user avatar
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How to convert magnitude to spectral luminosity? [duplicate]

In the Gaia catalogue I have the magnitude of several stars in the G band. I also have the distances to these stars (parallax is known). Additionally, I oftentimes have the effective temperature in ...
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1 vote
1 answer
688 views

Converting the log (Stellar Luminosity/Solar Luminosity) and the log of the plus and minus variation

There are some stars in the NASA Exoplanet Archive that I am interested in but I am confused by the physical meaning of the terms. For example, there's a star BD+15 2940 with a log10 of Solar ...
Naz's user avatar
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Q: Calculating the luminosity of a galaxy

I am currently working on a project on which I am calculating the luminosity of galaxies by using the SDSS data. They use a system of asinh magnitudes, and according to their website they use a system ...
Pedro de Oliveira's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
335 views

Stars that don't fit $L=4\pi R^{2}\sigma T^{4}$?

When calculating luminosity/radius/temperature for several stars, I've noticed that while the majority of stars conform to the luminosity relationship $L=4\pi R^{2}\sigma T^{4}$, there are a few that ...
TeeJay's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
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How to calculate the distance to galaxies with standard candles?

I was wondering how the distance in Mpc could be calculated between Earth and a galaxy using the luminosity provided? Do not be shy to use all math necessary :) Clarification: Luminosity is inversely ...
Pedro de Oliveira's user avatar
10 votes
1 answer
143 views

How actively is Deep Learning being used in exoplanet identification?

Papers, like this one from Google, show that Deep Learning and Machine Learning are effective in detecting exoplanets from luminosity data provided by telescopes like TESS or Kepler. These models ...
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2 votes
1 answer
236 views

Eddington luminosity in various plasmas

So I know that the Eddington luminosity is given by: $L_{Eddington} = 4\pi GMc/\kappa$. I want to calculate this luminosity for a plasma of purely ionized helium, as well as for an electron-...
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2 votes
2 answers
1k views

Radiative Flux, Irradiance and Luminosity confusion

First of all I know there is a similar question here, but I feel is wasn't answered at all. My question is that I have seen many texts which says that Radiative Flux is equal to the Irradiance of a ...
Jotarata's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to correct observed flux densities for redshift

Say I have a spectrum of a galaxy at a redshift $z$, in flux density units of erg/s/cm^2/Angstrom. I'd like to recover the spectrum (in the same flux density units) at z=0, i.e. at its rest ...
curious_cosmo's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
184 views

Luminosity of the Milky Way compared to Seyfert galaxies

This page lists the total luminosity of the Milky Way (MW) Galaxy to be $4\times10^{10}$ $L_{\rm sol}$, and $L_{\rm sol}=3.86 \cdot 10^{33} {\rm ergs.sec}^{-1}$; this gives a total luminosity for the ...
Jim421616's user avatar
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Conversion factors for flux

I have a flux value in the infrared band of 8 mJy at a wavelength of 80 microns that I want to translate into X-ray conventional ...
newmy's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
107 views

What area of Proxima Centauri would need to be occluded for the effect to be observable on Earth?

One of ideas of how Breakthrough Starshot could communicate data from Proxima Centauri is to have a massive swarm of the solar sail powered craft to pivot (with their sails) synchronously, taking ...
SF.'s user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
128 views

How can I estimate the M/L ratio from a fitted SED on a galaxy?

This answer (here in the forum) provides background to my question: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/5953 I am trying to understand the process in which a stellar population synthesis (SPS) is ...
Luis Enrique Garduño Puga's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
164 views

H-R diagram, Double stars

Can someone help me? I have a case, like, we have H-R diagram and two stars on it. One of them is a blue star on main sequence, another is a red giant. They have equal luminosity. If they are in a ...
Magaz0909's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
374 views

What does this figure imply about the luminosity of pre-main-sequence stars?

Check out Figure 1 in http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1955PASP...67..154H&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf . It seems to ...
Ken G's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
5k views

How to calculate luminosity in g-band from absolute AB magnitude and luminosity distance?

How can I calculate the (non-bolometric) luminosity $L$ of a galaxy (or a star for that matter) over a given band from its AB apparent magnitude $m_{AB}$ over that band and its luminosity distance $...
Miladiouss's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
110 views

Is it possible that quasars are not powered by black holes but some other kind of compact, massive object?

AFAIK, objects in the universe thought to be black holes show evidence of radiatively inefficient accretion flow. But is this the case with Quasars? If not, is there a possibility that the core of a ...
SavedbyZer0's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
3k views

How bright would it be on the "face" of Titan

If you were planing a maned mission to Titan and wanted to find a landing site that would get the most visible light for the longest amount of time, your first logical choice would be the dark side of ...
Wayward Astronaut's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
138 views

Two lights roughly 5 minutes apart about as bright as Mars or maybe Saturn

I'm in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and around 9:30 on August 4th 2017 I saw a bright light that got dimmer moving from the tree line to the east up and to my left fairly slowly, and steadily getting ...
mickjay67's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
493 views

How to shift an AGN X-ray spectrum to rest frame

I have limited information to shift a spectrum (in the X-ray 0.5-10 keV bandpass) from redshift $z=2$ to the rest frame. I have a plot of normalized (photon) counts s$^{−1}$ keV$^{−1}$ as a function ...
jasmine1323's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
246 views

What is the radiant intensity of the celestial sphere?

Specifically, excluding the Sun and the Moon: How much energy, as light and other frequencies reaches a point in space on the average, if you add up all the sources like distant stars, the Milky Way, ...
SF.'s user avatar
  • 6,277
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

What does Eddington Limit (Eddington Luminosity) Show?

We know Eddington Limit (Eddington Luminosity) is calculated with this formula: $$L_{Ed} \approx 3 * 10^4 * L_{sun} * \frac{M}{M_{sun}}$$ Example: For a black hole with $10^4 M_{sun}$, we get $$L_{...
titansarus's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
5k views

How to convert magnitudes to bolometric luminosity? [duplicate]

If we know a star's magnitudes from several bands(say u,g,r,i,z,J,H,k) and the star's distance, how to calculate Lbol? Let's suppose the star has a black body spectrum. Is there any manual about the ...
questionhang's user avatar
  • 3,063
2 votes
2 answers
520 views

Question about radiation pressure

A spaceship with mass $m = 25\:kg$ is moving toward a red giant with $M = M_{sun}$ and $L = 1000\:L_{sun}$ (L: Luminosity). It is moving on a line (so this is not an orbital question). When it gets ...
titansarus's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
298 views

Problem about finding distance with magnitude given

A star in Pleiades cluster has apparent magnitude of +12 ($m_{star} = +12$) determine it's distance from the sun? (We know the Sun properties such apparent and absolute magnitudes, distance from earth,...
titansarus's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
1k views

How to convert theoretical template spectrum from luminosity density to flux density units?

I'm working with galaxy spectral templates (e.g., Bruzual & Charlot 2003) which seem to always come with y-axis units of $L_{\odot}$/A and x-axis units of Angstroms. Thus the y-axis is a ...
quantumflash's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
779 views

Why do different instrumental filters use different magnitude systems (Vega vs AB)?

Suppose I wanted to construct the spectral energy distribution (SED) of an object. Further suppose I observe this object through the 9 broad-band filters using the Subaru Suprimecam (just for an ...
quantumflash's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
4k views

Difference between luminosity, luminous flux, and radiant flux?

I've looked this up, and was wondering the differences between them. Luminosity is the total energy emitted by a source, in watts. However, I'm confused about luminous flux and radiant flux. Since ...
user15819's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

How to find a Cepheid's pulsation period using its graph?

Basically, I've been seeing these graphs that say: Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation and the Period axis is supposed to be "logarithmic"; How does this graph work? Since the luminosity of a star ...
Potato Comet's user avatar
0 votes
3 answers
3k views

Calculate Luminosity of Vega

I want to calculate the Luminosity of a star e.g. Vega but can be any star and came across the formula for Luminosity at the University of Oregon (http://pages.uoregon.edu/soper/Light/luminosity.html)....
MiscellaneousUser's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
1k views

Finding luminosity of a star with magnitude

I'm working on my assessment for Physics in the IB, and I'm planning to investigate stars in spiral galaxies and determine their ages. For this I'm going to use data from the SDSS (Sloan digital sky ...
user3027207's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
488 views

What characteristics or patterns do galaxies have on color-luminosity chart? [closed]

For the following graph, I have some confusions: How do galaxies rank by mass? We know that on main-sequence, more luminous stars are also more massive, so I guess it also applies to galaxies. Do red ...
CoolKid's user avatar
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