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