An Introduction to Light Curves скачать в хорошем качестве

An Introduction to Light Curves

In previous videos I have shown light curves and explained how they can be used to find exoplanets and learn about stars. However, I have not discussed what a light curve is and how you acquire one. A light curve is a plot of the brightness of an astronomical object over time. To acquire one you need to take a single image and measure the brightness of the object using nearby reference or standard stars. These standard stars are stable and well understood, so can be used as a reference brightness to calculate the brightness of other objects. If this is done over multiple images the brightness of the object can be plotted. By looking at how the brightness varies over time (the shape of the lightcurve) we can understand a huge amount about stars, planets and asteroids.