AS102 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Orbital Period
Document Summary
However, the most important property of a star is its mass, something that is very difficult to measure. The most dependable way is to find something orbiting the star and then to use. In order to employ this method something must be orbiting our star in question. Fortunately, many stars are actually binary stars; that is, two stars orbiting each other like a giant dumbbell rotating in space. The centre of mass, or barycentre, of the two stars is the point about which the two stars are actually rotating. In this link you can see the animation of two stars, one small and one large, orbiting about the centre of mass marked by the red cross in the middle. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/file:orbit3. gif. The next link is a centre of mass simulator. Set the object 1 mass slider to 1. 0 as well as the object 2 mass slider. Make sure the separation slider is set at.
