Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Essential Topics

Essential topics from the class to study for your exam:

  • What is the relationship between telescope diameter and resolution?
  • Celestial sphere: when will a star at a given RA and dec be visible in the sky?
  • What are the equations of stellar structure, and the story of each one?
  • Scaling relations (what they are and how to derive them): M-R, M-L, M-Teff
  • Use scaling relations to derive the slope of the main sequence in the H-R diagram (log L vs -log Teff)
  • Derive the slope of the white dwarf main sequence
  • Equilibrium temperature of a planet as a function of semimajor axis and stellar properties
  • Blackbodies! Flux, luminosity, Rayleigh-Jeans Law (kT >> h*nu), Wien's Law (kT << h*nu), peak wavelength (relationship between photon energy and temperature)
  • Color and brightness of a star
  • Virial theorem - what does it mean? apply it to:
  • white dwarf (mass-radius)
  • typical temperature in the Sun
  • derivation of Kepler's 3rd law
  • How do we find planets?
  • Relationship between velocity amplitude of a Doppler signal and mass of planet, period of planet, mass of star

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