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Mass-to-light ratios in application can be used to gain insight into the dark matter content and dust extinction in a galaxy. [4] Historically, rotation curves for spiral galaxies have been used to study galaxies, but mass-to-light ratios prove more accurate as a method of measuring mass. [5]
The relationship is represented by the equation: = where L ⊙ and M ⊙ are the luminosity and mass of the Sun and 1 < a < 6. [2] The value a = 3.5 is commonly used for main-sequence stars. [ 3 ] This equation and the usual value of a = 3.5 only applies to main-sequence stars with masses 2 M ⊙ < M < 55 M ⊙ and does not apply to red giants ...
The Tully–Fisher relation for spiral and lenticular galaxies. In astronomy, the Tully–Fisher relation (TFR) is a widely verified empirical relationship between the mass or intrinsic luminosity of a spiral galaxy and its asymptotic rotation velocity or emission line width. Since the observed brightness of a galaxy is distance-dependent, the ...
A mock-up of the galaxy color–magnitude diagram with three populations: the red sequence, the blue cloud, and the green valley. The galaxy color–magnitude diagram shows the relationship between absolute magnitude (a measure of luminosity) and mass of galaxies.
Many characteristics of a galaxy are correlated. For example, as one would expect, a galaxy with a higher luminosity has a larger effective radius. The usefulness of these correlations is when a characteristic that can be determined without prior knowledge of the galaxy's distance (such as central velocity dispersion – the Doppler width of spectral lines in the central parts of the galaxy ...
Velocity dispersion (y-axis) plotted against absolute magnitude (x-axis) for a sample of elliptical galaxies, with the Faber–Jackson relation shown in blue.. The Faber–Jackson relation provided the first empirical power-law relation between the luminosity and the central stellar velocity dispersion of elliptical galaxy, and was presented by the astronomers Sandra M. Faber and Robert Earl ...
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The mass, radius, and luminosity of a star are closely interlinked, and their respective values can be approximated by three relations. First is the Stefan–Boltzmann law, which relates the luminosity L, the radius R and the surface temperature T eff. Second is the mass–luminosity relation, which relates the luminosity L and the mass M.