Friday, 11 January 2013

star - Stellar mass database

Check out the on-line SIMBAD astronomical data base. You can even make separate lists based on criteria (like: list all of the stars between 10 and 20 parsecs (have to convert parallax to light years/ parsecs = 1/parallax (in arcsec/ 1 parsec = 3.262 LY) with class between G0 and G9 from 0 to +30 deg declination). It's pretty cool and shows numerous listings of distance values, brightness, metallicity, etc. complete with date of study and source. I just looked again and masses aren't listed (sorry). Masses aren't directly measured anyway (except in the case of binaries where we know the distance). Masses are essentially determined from the Hertzprung -Russell (mass/ luminosity) diagram and can be refined if we can determine age by looking at spectra. Back to Sol-Station or Wikipedia or I should say their references.

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