2 The Astronomical Context

Here we learn more about available types of astronomical data in order from easy to di cult.

2.1 Angular and positional measurements

2.1.1 Angles between objects measured on the sky i.e. in projection
View in Sky Cross Section View

We can usually measure small angles  1  much better than large angles say 45 . We nd accuracies of Optical Radio
  0.00001
  0.00000001 best best Very Long Baseline Interferometry VLBI limited by spacecraft limited by properties of ray detectors

X ray ray

  200
  1

Useful conversions 1 600 360000 206 00000 10

1 radian 57 3

1 mrad 3 50 1 rad 0 2100

2.1.2 Coordinate systems in the sky

Positions of objects in the sky can be given in various coordinate systems.

Equatorial Celestial Coordinates 

 or RA DEC

The Earth is a pretty good gyroscope so its axis points a constant direction in inertial space the North Celestial Pole NCP. Declination  or DEC is measured from 90 at that pole to 90 at the South Celestial Pole. The longitude like coordinate is called right ascension  or RA and is measured confusingly in hours 24h 360 . The zero point is at the vernal equinox where the Sun is in the sky at the beginning of Spring also called the rst point of Ares. RA increases in number in the direction the sky moves as the Earth turns. That is a xed telescope sees increasing RA positions with time 1 hour RA per hour of sidereal time. One peculiarity is that objects at rest on sky have RA Dec which vary very gradually with time because of the Earths precession. This occurs because the spin axis of the earth is not aligned with the Earth Sun orbital plane.
23.5 23.5

"now"

"6 mos. later"

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spi

nv ect

or

If the earth was a sphere this would not a ect the Earths spin axis there would be no coupling but tides and rotation distort the earth so it feels a net torque from the gravity of the sun moon. This torque makes the polar axis direction to NCP precess with a period of 26 000 years.

spin axis now precession of spin axis

23.5

Every 26 000 years the RA goes through a big loop and DEC changes by 23 5 . Positions of objects in the sky change by tens of arcseconds per year. This is easily detectable as we can measure the angle to 10 3 arcsec.

Coordinates quoted for objects are therefore refered to a particular date or standard epoch to remove e ects of precession. Standards are B1950 going out of use J2000 coming in Here the B and J refer to technicalities of the model while 1950 and 2000 are the reference dates typically noon on January 1 of the date.

Galactic Coordinates l b
The equator of the galactic coordinate system is the galactic plane the Milky Way. l the longitude coordinate is zero in the direction of the Galactic Center. b the galactic latitude goes from 90 at the North Galactic Pole NGP down to 90 at the SGP. 12

2.1.3 Angular separations from coordinates in Sky

First convert from latitude longitude style coordinates to Cartesian unit vec tors e.g.

rz z sin b rx x cos b cos l ry y cos b sin l

Then use vector formulas to get the angle between the two unit vectors. cos  r
r
1 2

is ok when  is not small but for small separations it becomes inaccurate angles pile up around cos  1. In that case use the construction
^ r1 (1/2)

(1/2) |^ r1 - ^ r2|

^ r 2 length =( 1/2) |^ r1 + ^ r2|

which yields

tan 1 2

jr jr

1 1

rj rj
2 2

2.1.4 Solid angles

When observing an object from a point the solid angle subtended by the object refers to the fraction of all lines of sight that the object covers. In 13

analogy with the de nition of radians the unit of solid angle the steradian measures the area on the unit sphere that the object covers. Since a sphere has area 4r there are 4 steradians in the whole sky. The corresponding number of square degrees is
2

360 4 2 41252 96  40000

 since  is the radius of a unit circle in degrees. The Sun and Moon are both very close to 0 5 diameter so their areas are each 0 5 4 0 20 square degrees or  1 200000 of the celestial sphere. If you think hard you will see why this tells you that full moonlight is about 10 times dimmer than full sunlight
2 360 2 2 5

2.2 Brightness measurements

2.2.1 Flux and UBV system
Flux is the energy arriving from a particular object star galaxy ... per unit area of detector per unit time so it has units erg cm 2s 1 .

1 cm 2

distance D

You can see that if the source emits isotropically same in all directions the relation between ux F and total luminosity L erg s  is L F 4D
1 2

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Ideally Flux would be the total energy emitted but in practice we measure di erent wavelength bands with di erent instruments or detectors. In such cases we label it by a letter telling which band e.g. V visual and it then means energy per area per time arriving in that band. The most common bands are U ultraviolet  B blue  V visual  R red  I J K infrared.
100 Transparency (%) 80 60 40 20 0 3000 4000 5000 6000 A Wavelength

Light Transmission Through UBV Filters. This graph shows the wavelength ranges
Band U B V R I J K Central Wavelength 3650 A 4400 A 5500 A 7000  A 9000 A 1.25 2.2 E ective width de ned 680  2400 A 980 A 890 A 2200A A 0.38 48 by area under curve log f erg cm 2 s 1  1  4.37 4.18 4.42 4.76 5.08 5.48 6.40 for m 0

over which the standardized U B and V lters are transparent to light. The U lter is transparent to the near ultraviolet. The B lter is transparent from about 380 to 550 nm and the V lter is transparent from about 500 to 650 nm.

Note that 1000 A 100 nm 0.1. We write F F F etc. for in band uxes. When we need a word for real total energy we say bolometric so
U B V

bol

total luminosity in all bands.

To interpret the last line in the above table we need to know about the magnitude scale. 15

2.2.2 Apparent magnitude

Apparent magnitude is de ned logarithmically property of eye such that an increase in magnitude by 5 corresponds to a factor of 100 in apparent brightness  ux. Thus if we have two stars with uxes F and F their magnitudes obey  F m m 2 5 log F
1 2 2 1 2 10 1

This can be written

2 5 log F

2 5 log F  constant
1

Once we decide on magnitude for one star all others are determined. Since stars have di erent colors well learn why later we must compare them in a speci c color band i.e. look at them through lters as shown in 2.2.1. The naked eye is esentially a V lter. Thus like uxes magnitudes are written with a subscript indicating band m m etc. Sometimes this is written just V B etc. The zero point constant derives historically from the ancient Greeks who named some bright stars as being of the rst magnitude what we would now call V 0
V B

Arcturus  Boo V 0 06 B V 1 23 Vega  Lyr V 0 04 B V 0 0 Capella  Aur V 0 8 B V 0 79 Note that larger magnitude means dimmer Betelgeuse  Ori V 0 8 B V 1 85 Aldebaran  Tau V 0 85 B V 1 53 16

Larger color di erence means redder color. With good eyes and a dark sky not Cambridge you can see stars down to V  6. How much energy do we receive from Betelgeuse in the V band From the previous table for V 0

10

4 42

erg  0 089 3 4  10 erg cm s cm s

6 2 2

But Betelgeuse has V 0.8 so its

3 4  10 10
6

0 40 8

erg 1 6  10 cm s
6 2

You can see that the general relation for any band X e.g. X

UBV 

FX 10

CX W 10 X

04

mX

where CX is the bands log f for mX 0 WX is its e ective width and mX is the apparant magnitude of the object in question. Incidentally since 10 0 398 is pretty close to e 0 367 magni tudes are not too di erent from e folds. This is useful for calculating small magnitude di erences in your head e.g.
04 1

0 03 mag  e

0 03

 1 0 03 1 03

So a di erence of 0.03 mag is about a 3 ux di erence and so forth. Another useful fact if you like decibels is that 1 mag 4 dB. Therefore e.g. 2.5 mag 10 dB factor of 10 in intensity.

2.2.3 Absolute Magnitude

Absolute magnitude denoted M M etc . is de ned as the magnitude an object would have if it were 10 pc away. Thus since F D D the
B V 2

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m M 5 log 10Dpc M 5 log D 5 the 2.5 on log ux becomes a 5 on log distance. The quantity m M 5 log D 5
is called the distance modulus. You should now be able to derive the relation between absolute magnitude M and physical luminosity L in a given color band for an object. These are properties of the object not of its distance. If we know L or M  for an object then measurement of m gives D the distance. A standard candle is a hoped for class of objects which has a luminosity absolute mag which can be determined easily without knowing its distance. Notice that color di erences e.g. B V are independent of distance and are equal to M M e.g. Here are the masses absolute magnitudes and so called spectral types of stars on the main sequence well learn more about this later. Spectral type O B A F G K M Typical Mass units of M  40 6 2 1.5 1.0 0.7 0.3 M 5 8 1 1 2.0 3.4 5.1 7.3 11.8 The Sun is a G star at 10 pc it would be barely visible m 5 1.
B V V V

distance

2.2.4 Spectra
Atoms in a gas can emit light at speci ed frequencies called spectral lines. They can also absorb light at these frequencies. Whether they on balance emit or absorb depends on their temperature ionization density etc. So a spectrum might look like 18

emission lines

f
"Continuum level" absorption lines 0

Wavelength

The units of f are ergs per cm collecting area per s per wavelength. This is the same f that we previously saw in the UVB magnitude table.
2

2.3 Velocity measurements

Velocity comes in two avors i radial velocity measured by Doppler shifts

vr

vt velocity v

  o z vr in nonrelativistic limit o o c Between successive emissions of crests time intervals  c the emit ter moves a distance v  c while the wave moves a distance  so   v c   v   c
0 0 0 0 0 0 0

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0 v c

position one crest ago

position now

Lab Observed
blue 0 red

Redshift  z 0  object receding Blueshift  z 0  object approaching

ii proper motion Here we observe motion of object in plane of the sky over time sometimes a very long time. We get vt v sin from the rate of change of position on the sky if we know the distance to the object. We generally do know the distance from parallax measurements q.v. because we can only see proper motions for nearby stars. E.g. to see appreciable motion say  100 century given that the typical velocity of a star is  10 km s we can only measure vt for stars within distances  2 kpc about one fth the distance to the center of the galaxy.
1

20

We can do better with VLBI radio techniques using masers an as tronomical analog to a laser because 1 we can determine angles more accurately and 2 maser velocities are larger than veloci ties of nearby stars. This has been used to get the distance to the galactic center.

2.4 Distance measurements

The di cult one. Problems measuring distances cause many arguments e.g. the Hubble constant in cosmology. Various methods are used. i radar round time measurements Venus Moon. Okay for nearby planets used to set the scale of the solar system 1 AU 1 50  10 m 1 50 10 cm.
11 13

ii triangulation again okay for Venus Moon. Taken with radar it leads to measurements of the AU.

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iii parallax using Earths orbit

p 1 AU p p p to distant objects (providing reference frame)

Angles p are small  100 and the distance D R p. If R 1 AU and p is measured in seconds of arc then D comes out in parsecs. 1 pc distance at which 1 AU subtends 1 arcsec 3 086  10 cm.
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iv inverse square law and standard candles If you know that a certain object has luminosity L e.g. by look ing at similar objects near you L in erg sec or watts then the distance of that object is given from its observed ux

L 4D

Remember F is in energy sec unit area.

Sphere

D
Source

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This method works well for Cepheids variable stars whose variability period obtained from long time observations is related to L. Thus we use the measured period to infer L and combine L with the observed brightness to get D. RR Lyrae stars another kind of variable star and Tully Fisher galaxies in which the galaxys luminosity is inferred from its rotational velocity are used in a similar way. Note that extinction the absorption of light by intervening material can cause problems. v angular sizes of standard rods Same idea as iv nd a distant object that is the same as a nearby one for which you know the size. If the nearby object has a true size L and the distant object has angular size  then

D
vi Hubble law galaxies and beyond

Use the concept that the Universe is expanding. If the Hubble law has been calibrated for you this involves getting measurements of distances of objects by independent means then a radial velocity measurement leads to the distance from

vr HoD
where vr is the Doppler velocity and Ho 50 100 km s pc . This is usually written Ho 100 h km s pc where h 0 5 1.0. But note that peculiar velocities and gravitational redshifts might cause problems.
1 1 1 1

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Note that the use of method vi gives an uncertainty of a factor  2 in the distance scale This is a real problem for astrophysics. Ho is not well known because of the di culty in determining distances to distant galaxies from methods iv and v.

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