Suppose you observe a tight eclipsing binary with orbital period of 3 days, and radial velocity semi-amplitude for both components of 80 kilometers/second. a. Without doing any calculation, you know that the mass ratio of the binary is 1:1. Explain why? b. What are the masses and orbital radii of the two stars? c. Suppose the binary is perfectly aligned so each eclipse the center of one star goes across the other. How often do you see an eclipse? d. Suppose one eclipse lasts for 3.5 hours. What is the radius of the stars?
Stellar evolution
We may see thousands of stars in the dark sky. Our universe consists of billions of stars. Stars may appear tiny to us but they are huge balls of gasses. Sun is a star of average size. Some stars are even a thousand times larger than the sun. The stars do not exist forever they have a certain lifetime. The life span of the sun is about 10 billion years. The star undergoes various changes during its lifetime, this process is called stellar evolution. The structure of the sun-like star is shown below.
Red Shift
It is an astronomical phenomenon. In this phenomenon, increase in wavelength with corresponding decrease in photon energy and frequency of radiation of light. It is the displacement of spectrum of any kind of astronomical object to the longer wavelengths (red) side.
1. Suppose you observe a tight eclipsing binary with orbital period of 3 days, and radial velocity semi-amplitude for both components of 80 kilometers/second.
a. Without doing any calculation, you know that the mass ratio of the binary is 1:1. Explain why?
b. What are the masses and orbital radii of the two stars?
c. Suppose the binary is perfectly aligned so each eclipse the center of one star goes across the other. How often do you see an eclipse?
d. Suppose one eclipse lasts for 3.5 hours. What is the radius of the stars?
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