《天体物理概论》maoz chap3.pdfVIP

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Dan Maoz: Astrophysics in a Nutshell is published by Princeton University Press and copyrighted, © 2007, by Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers. Follow links for Class Use and other Permissions. For more information send email to: permissions@pupress.princeton.edu 3 Stellar Physics In this chapter, we obtain a physical understanding of main-sequence stars and of their properties, as outlined in the previous chapter. The Sun is the nearest and best-studied star, and its properties provide useful standards to which other stars can be compared. For reference, let us summarize the measured parameters of the Sun. The Earth–Sun distance is d = 1.5 × 108 km = 1 AU. (3.1) The mass of the Sun is M = 2.0 × 1033 g. (3.2) The radius of the Sun is r = 7.0 × 1010 cm. (3.3) Using the mass and the radius, we can find the mean density of the Sun, M 3 × 2 × 1033 g −3 ρ¯ = 4 3 = 10 3 = 1.4 g cm . (3.4) 3 π R 4π × (7 × 10 cm) The Sun’s mean density is thus not too different from that of liquid water. The bolometric Solar luminosity is L = 3.8 × 1033 erg s−1 . (3.5) When divided by 4π d2 , this gives the Solar flux above the Earth’s atmosphere, sometimes called the solar constant: f = 1.4 × 106 er