ASTRON 10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Star System, Double Star, Binary Star
Document Summary
Hers(cid:272)hel fou(cid:374)d (cid:373)a(cid:374)y (cid:862)paired(cid:863) stars that (cid:449)ere (cid:448)ery (cid:272)lose together: charted their positions often, and found that they indeed orbited each other, found first double stars. Through kepler"s third la(cid:449), k(cid:374)o(cid:449)i(cid:374)g orbital period helps one to determine distance from one object to another. Can figure out overall mass and mass percentage of the system for a particular star. Noti(cid:272)ed that irius a"s path (cid:449)as(cid:374)"t li(cid:374)ear, (cid:271)ut had a slight (cid:272)urve to it, indicating the presence of another gravitationally massive body there. Irius b (cid:449)as fou(cid:374)d later, a (cid:449)hite d(cid:449)arf (cid:374)or(cid:373)ally u(cid:374)see(cid:374) due to irius a"s brightness. Planets can be found in a similar way. In a double star system, they orbit around a common center of gravity. In a triple star system, third star is far enough away from the other 2 that they can be treated like one star (one single, one binary) In a quadruple star system, 2 pairs of binary stars orbit each other.
