Astronomy › Section L · Analysing starlight and the stellar census › Topic L.6
Measuring stellar masses
Mass decides how brightly a star shines, how long it lives and how it dies, yet no scale can weigh a star. The answer is to watch two stars orbit each other and let gravity do the weighing.
In this topic
- Weighing a star
- Binary stars
- Spectroscopic binaries
- Both stars orbit the centre of mass
- Kepler's third law for binary stars
- Worked example: weighing Alpha Centauri A and B
- Masses from spectroscopic binaries
- Worked example: an eclipsing pair
- The range of stellar masses
- The mass–luminosity relation
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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