Starlight An Introduction to Stellar Physics for Amateurs
When you look up at the sky at night and see the stars, do you understand what you’re looking at? What is starlight made up of, and how does it travel to us? How are stars born, and how do they die? How do we figure out how far away are the stars and how
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Starlight An Introduction to Stellar Physics for Amateurs Keith Robinson
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Keith Robinson 4 Bedford Place Scotforth, Lancaster United Kingdom [email protected]
ISSN 1431-9756 ISBN 978-1-4419-0707-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-0708-0 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0708-0 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2009931800 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Acknowledgements My very grateful thanks go to Jean-Francois LeBorgne of the Laboratoire Astrophysique de Toulouse, for permission to reproduce spectra from their STELIB library. Many thanks also to Gary Billings, Jeff Hopkins, Robin Leadbeater, and Daniel Majaess of the American Association of Variable Stars Photometry Discussion Group for kindly providing information regarding online sources of spectra. Introducing a little bit of mathematics into a book like this can be a risky business, so it’s always good to have someone who can offer critical appraisal. My sincere thanks go to my great friend and amateur astronomer par excellence, Denis Buczynski, for doing this in respect of chapter Starlight by Numbers and offering some helpful criticisms and suggestions. Many thanks to Maury Solomon, Harry Blom, and all at Springer, New York, for their help and enthusiastic support during the writing of the book and also to John Watson for his great enthusiasm and encouragement over the original idea for the book. Finally my heartfelt gratitude goes to my wife Elizabeth for reading the manuscript and offering many helpful comments and suggestions. All diagrams were prepared by me.
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Contents A River of Starlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
Starlight by Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7
From Light to Starlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Space – The Great Radiation Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 A Multitude of Magnitudes for the Colors of Starlight . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Photons Must Get Through – Radiative Transfer . . . . . . .
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