Quote:
Originally Posted by shelltree
I had a hard enough time getting to sleep on Friday night because I couldn't stop thinking about Wolf Rayet stars  and their temperatures and their violent conditions and...and...and...phewf!  But I am very, very intrigued to learn as much as possible about stars, how they are born, how they live and die, everything! It can be so confusing though... 
And in my defence Suz, I went away and went through goodness knows how many constellations on wiki to figure it out without google's trusty assistance  But no, it was utterly baffling! I will forever remember now that Alpha Muscae is the lowest mag "alpha" star in any constellation  The genetive is right and everything (Hi Les  )
This makes a lot more sense! Even after I wrote my response, I had a feeling I hadn't really thought about it hard enough or read enough  But this clears it up for me perfectly, thanks Carl  And that is one doozy of an equation... (well, for me anyway ) but generally what it represents makes sense...although what does MS stand for? I just spent the past 15 minutes trying to figure out that equation on my calculator... and I got 17469281074.217107003196669286963 LOL.
Not sure why I even bothered trying |
Just remember either of these equations (whichever is easiest)....
(1/M^2.5) x 10^10, or, ((M/M*)^-2.5) x 10^10. M* is the mass of the sun, which is usually taken as having a value of just 1.