Chapter 1

Introduction to PX144

1.1 Introduction
These notes comprise the course content for PX144. Important equations and ideas will
appear in boxes like this . You should just know these; you should be able to derive all other
equations. In the main I like linear narratives – no boxes, alternative tracks or other fancy
devices – so these notes are to just to be read from start to finish.

1.2 Online resources

There are some fabulous online resources for astronomy and I encourage you to explore these
during and after the module. You may already be familiar with Google Sky1 which delivers
pictures of any part of the sky. Another two well worth a look are apod.nasa.gov/apod,
“Astronomy Picture of the Day”, daily updated with often beautiful images which reflect
current celestial phenomena, and stellarium, free software for showing the sky, which I highly
recommend for understanding the celestial sphere.
Some more technical ones are: simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad, “SIMBAD”, an archive of infor-
mation on particular objects, with a slant towards objects in our Galaxy; ned.ipac.caltech.edu,
“NED”, for objects outside our Galaxy; skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov, “SkyView” showing the Uni-
verse at di↵erent wavelengths (I suggest starting with the “Non-Astronomers” link on the
page); Gaia DR22 , second data release from the Gaia satellite giving parallaxes for over a
billion objects (try entering “Proxima Cen” with restriction “< 10” in the constraint called
“Gmag”).

1.3 Units
In astronomy, SI units often take a bit of back seat. For instance, when talking about stars, it
very often makes more sense to reference their masses to the Sun’s mass (symbol M ) than to
use kilograms. Hence you will invariably find for example that a statement like “a star of mass
5.35 M ” is preferred to the equivalent “a star of mass 1.064 ⇥ 1030 kg”. Solar radii (R ) are
used for stellar radii, Jupiter and Earth are often used to scale planets (MJ , RJ , ME , RE , etc3 ),
parsecs (pc) and multiples thereof (kpc, Mpc, Gpc) for distances beyond the Solar System.
1
Clickable link when viewing notes online; URL https://www.google.com/sky
2
Full URL: https://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=I/345/gaia2
3
I use to indicate the Sun, but avoid weird symbols for other Solar System objects, including Earth.

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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO PX144 6

Symbol Full name SI Comment

M Solar mass 1.989 ⇥ 1030 kg Mass of the Sun
R Solar radius 6.955 ⇥ 108 m Radius of the Sun
L Solar luminosity 3.828 ⇥ 1026 W Luminosity (power output) of the Sun
MJ Jupiter mass 1.898 ⇥ 1027 kg Jupiter’s mass ⇡ 10 3 M
RJ Jupiter radius 6.991 ⇥ 107 m Jupiter’s radius ⇡ 0.1 R
ME Earth mass 5.972 ⇥ 1024 kg Earth’s mass
RE Earth radius 6.371 ⇥ 106 m Earth’s radius ⇡ 10 2 R
au astronomical unit 1.496 ⇥ 1011 m Mean Earth-Sun distance.
pc parsec 3.086 ⇥ 1016 m Distance at which 1 au subtends 100
arcsec, 00 arcsecond 100 = (1/3600)° Unit of angle, “second of arc”
arcmin, 0 arcminute 10 = (1/60)° Unit of angle, “minute of arc”
degree, ° degree 360° = 2⇡ rad Unit of angle.
rad radian 1 rad = 206 26500 SI unit of angle = 180/⇡ = 57.3°.

Table 1.1: Units and quantities commonly encountered in an astronomical context.

People (well, let’s be plain: other physicists) occasionally complain about astrophysicists’
penchant for arcane units – astronomical “magnitudes” for measuring object brightnesses are a
particular source of irritation4 . Some of it reflects astronomy’s heritage as the “most ancient”
science with the units of time and angle stretching back to the Sumerians, a people who lived
in a region located in modern Iraq 5000 years ago, while “magnitudes” go back 2000 years or
so to the ancient Greeks. There are points to be made on both sides, but probably the one
thing that one can be pretty sure of is that the situation is unlikely to change any time soon.
I will use SI metres, newtons and joules where appropriate, but I will also make significant
use of R , M , pc and their ilk. See Table 1.1 for a list of some units that you might encounter,
and I don’t even attempt to cover some such as “statcoulombs” which you can look up for
yourself.
There is one more significant point to make. When starting to study astrophysics, people
don’t have a context for the numbers. If you were asked to calculate a distance between two
cities and obtained a value of 0.0023 m you would know something had gone wrong. But what
about 2 ⇥ 1013 m for the size of star? Or 5 ⇥ 1026 kg for the mass of a galaxy? Both are
in fact implausible values. Get used to trying to reference such numbers against comparable
quantities that you know, in this case R and M , to answer “Silly or not?”. A more difficult
one is energy. Is 5 ⇥ 1047 J large as an estimate of the total energy of the Sun? Try comparing
it with the rest mass energy of the Sun, M c2 and see what you find.

4
Full disclosure: magnitudes do sometimes seem to have been devised purely to stress students.