how do people calculate the size and temperature if planets and stars.
In: Mathematics
People have mentioned how it works for stars, but for planets it’s much harder (assuming its exoplanets).
Most detections of exoplanets involve the planet crossing their host star in our line of sight, like of like how our moon eclipses our sun. We can measure the dip in brightness of the host star, calculate the size the planet must be to cause that dip.
We can also measure the duration of the dip in brightness, which gives us a measurement of the period of the orbit, which also tells us how far the planet is away from the star. From that, we can calculate how much energy it receives from the star and how hot it could be, but the actual temperature depends on the chemical composition of the planet and the atmosphere.
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