Astronomy 1021 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Coronagraph

• School: Western University
• Department: Astronomy
• Course: Astronomy 1021
• Professor: Weirich

Document Summary

Extracting information: the period we see in the radial velocity curve tells us the average distance of the planet through newtons version of kelpers 3d law at that distance, a more massive planet will cause larger velocities so the amplitude variations tells us the planets mass the shape of the radial velocity curve tells us the shape the of the planets orbit larger distance= longer period o: more mass and highly elliptical orbit are characteristics of the graph of. Doppler shift blueshift=toward us red shift= away from us one caveat though: dopplers shifts reveal only that part of a stars motion is directed toward or away from us: only the radial velocity so the true or full orbital velocity of the star might be different from the radial velocity we measure which has implications for some of the properties we can determine o example: suppose we measure a radial velocity of 20 m/s for a star.