Science Memes

11148 readers

2545 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

731

Seconds (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

79 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There are two possibilities I can think of:

Orbit duration can be used to calculate mass
The diameter of a star or the parallax distance on the sky (in arcseconds) can also be used to evaluate mass

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Size doesn't say much about mass though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I thought stars of similar masses were also of similar sizes. They're not?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I'm no astrologer but from what I've learned, we also need to look at the color to glassify stars into categories. It varies a bit though in each category so it's a blunt tool.

Then there are other objects like gas clouds and even galaxies. For those, we have no idea of the density distribution, so radial size gives us even less info.