Lectures on Stellar StatisticsCharlier, C. V. L. (Carl Vilhelm Ludwig)
Science
Lectures on Stellar Statistics
Charlier, C. V. L. (Carl Vilhelm Ludwig)
Astronomy; Milky Way; Stars
In popular writings, another unit: a _light-year_, has for a very long
time been employed. The relation between these units is
1 siriometer = 15.79 light-years,
1 light-year = 0.0633 siriometers.
5. In regard to _time_ also, the terrestrial units (second, day, year)
are too small for stellar wants. As being consistent with the unit of
distance, I have proposed for the stellar unit of time a _stellar year_
(st.), corresponding to 10^6 years. We thus obtain the same relation
between the stellar and the planetary units of length and time, which
has the advantage that a _velocity_ of a star expressed in siriometers
per stellar year is expressed with the same numerals in planetary units
of length per year.
Spectroscopic determinations of the velocities, through the
DOPPLER-principle, are generally expressed in km. per second. The
relation with the stellar unit is the following:
1 km./sec. = 0.2111 sir./st.,
= 0.2111 planetary units per year,
1 sir./st. = 4.7375 km./sec.
Thus the velocity of the sun is 20 km./sec. or 4.22 sir./st. (= 4.22
earth distances from the sun per year).
Of the numerical value of the stellar velocity we shall have opportunity
to speak in the following. For the present it may suffice to mention
that most stars have a velocity of the same degree as that of the sun
(in the mean somewhat greater), and that the highest observed velocity
of a star amounts to 72 sir./st. (= 340 km./sec.). In the next chapter I
give a table containing the most speedy stars. The least value of the
stellar velocity is evidently equal to zero.
6. _Intensity of the radiation._ This varies within wide limits. The
faintest star which can give an impression on the photographic plates of
the greatest instrument of the Mount Wilson observatory (100 inch
reflector) is nearly 100 million times fainter than Sirius, a star which
is itself more than 10000 million times fainter than the sun--speaking
of apparent radiation.
The intensity is expressed in _magnitudes_ (_m_). The reason is partly
that we should otherwise necessarily have to deal with very large
numbers, if they were to be proportional to the intensity, and partly
that it is proved that the human eye apprehends quantities of light as
proportional to _m_.
This depends upon a general law in psycho-physics, known as FECHNER's
_law_, which says that changes of the apparent impression of light are
proportional not to the changes of the intensity but to these changes
divided by the primitive intensity. A similar law is valid for all
sensations. A conversation is inaudible in the vicinity of a waterfall.
An increase of a load in the hand from nine to ten hectograms makes no
great difference in the feeling, whereas an increase from one to two
hectograms is easily appreciable. A match lighted in the day-time makes
no increase in the illumination, and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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