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What is a Galaxy?

What is a Galaxy?. Friday, October 10 Next Planetarium Show: Wed, Oct 15. Are stars distributed uniformly through space, or do they clump together?. Astronomers now know that stars are in clumps called “galaxies”. To find that out, they had to know how stars are distributed in 3-D.

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What is a Galaxy?

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  1. Whatis a Galaxy? Friday, October 10Next Planetarium Show: Wed, Oct 15

  2. Are stars distributed uniformly through space, or do they clump together? Astronomers now know that stars are in clumps called “galaxies”. To find that out, they had to know how stars are distributed in 3-D.

  3. Finding Sun’s distance is relatively easy. c = speed of light Bounce a radio signal from Venus. Round trip travel time ÷ 2 = One-way travel time. One-way travel time × c = distance to Venus.

  4. Once you’ve plotted the orbit of Venus, you know where the Sun is: at a focus of the elliptical orbit. average Earth-Sun distance = 1 astronomical unit (AU) = 149,597,870.69 kilometers

  5. Most stars are unresolved in angle. Seen by a human eye, they’re blobs an arcminute across; resolution of eye = 1 arcminute. Seen with a large telescope, they’re blobs an arcsecond across; resolution of telescope = 1 arcsecond.

  6. A star will be an arcsecond across when its distance is 206,000 times its diameter. A star (like the Sun) will be 1/2° across when its distance is 115 times its diameter.

  7. Because stars are unresolved, we know they are far away. 206,000 × Sun’s diameter = 290 billion kilometers = 11 light-days “Far away” = at a distance larger than 206,000 times the diameter of a star.

  8. Can we actually find the distance? Yes! We can find the distance to nearby stars by measuring their parallax.

  9. Parallax = shift in apparent position of star over the course of half a year. Remember: the parallax is too small to be seen by the naked eye (< 1 arcminute).

  10. For the closest stars, the parallax is large enough to be measured with a telescope. In 1838, F. W. Bessel found a parallax of 0.3 arcseconds for a nearby star.

  11. How to find distance by measuring parallax: Parallax and distance are related by a simple equation.

  12. p = parallax of star (in arcseconds) d = distance to star (in parsecs) 1 parsec = distance at which a star has a parallax of 1 arcsecond = 206,000 AU = 3.26 light-years.

  13. How far is the journey from here to Proxima Centauri? = 4.2 light-years = 270,000 AU

  14. The Parallax Problem Best parallax measurements were provided by the Hipparcos satellite. Parallaxes < 1/1000 of an arcsecond were too small to measure. Distances > 1000 parsecs can’t be found from parallax.

  15. How can we find the distance to a star more than 1000 parsecs away? Use the “World-Famous Inverse-Square Law”.

  16. The Inverse-Square Law. Every star has a luminosity (L): this the wattage of the star (how much energy it emits per unit time). 40 watts 4×1026 watts

  17. We don’t measure the luminosity of a star. We measure the flux(f): the wattage collected per unit area. Flux of sunlight at the Earth’s location = 1400 watts per square meter

  18. The flux is related to the luminosity by an inverse-square law. What is the flux f at a distance r from a star of luminosity L?

  19. At a distance d from the star, the luminosity Lis spread over an area 4 πr2. Flux goes inversely as the square of distance.

  20. What the %$*&@ does this have to do with finding distances to stars?? If you know the luminosity L, and you measure the fluxf, you can compute the distance r:

  21. An object whose luminosity you know is called a “standard candle”. Alas! Stars have a wide range of luminosities. Betelgeuse = high luminosity Sun = medium luminosity Proxima Centauri = low luminosity

  22. For nearby stars, we can measure distance (from parallax) and flux. We compute luminosity: Eureka! Stars with identical spectra have identical luminosity!

  23. Spectra of stars very hot & luminous cool & less luminous

  24. Find a star with a spectrum identical to the Sun’s (for instance). Measure the star’s flux f. Assume the star’s luminosity is the same as the Sun’s (L = 4 × 1026 watts). Compute the star’s distance:

  25. We live in a disk-shaped galaxy. The luminous path called the “Milky Way” is seen when we look the long way through the disk.

  26. If we could see the Milky Way galaxy edge-on from outside: = 8000 parsecs = 26,000 light-years =1.7 billion AU

  27. Other disk-shaped galaxies exist: Andromeda Galaxy: 2 million light-years away = 700,000 parsecs away = 140 billion A.U. away

  28. Galaxies come in many shapes

  29. What is a galaxy? A gravitationally bound assembly of many stars (+ associated planets) interstellar gas (+ dust) and dark matter. “many” ≥ 10 million

  30. Monday’s Lecture: Gravity for Beginners Reading: Chapter 4

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