Gene Smith's Astronomy Tutorial The Units of Science |
Since Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences, it has developed many traditions over the years. While an astronomer would not hesitate for an instant to apply cutting-edge technology at the telescope or computer, the language and units of measurement in the field change much more slowly. So, as you set out to investigate the Universe with us, let us introduce you to a few words, units and short-hand that you'll encounter here.
As was discussed in
The Scale
of the Universe tutorial, the important numbers in Astronomy span
almost 40 orders of magnitude in size. Consider
the mass of the Sun:
For very small numbers, such as the mass of the proton,
There are several good web pages about Scientific Notation. If you would like to read a bit more, try out the University of Maryland's Astronomy Programs site, with a Scientific Notation Exercise and an Astronomical Distance Calculator.
Before people can share information about the physical world, they need a common language and standard units of measurement. Since science is an international human endevour, scientists all over the world have agreed to use one set of units when they talk with each other about their work. This world-wide standard is called the metric system. So, when Scientist A in Katmandu says the distance to the Sun is 150,000,000 kilometers, Scientist B in Helsinki knows exactly what that means. Here is a list of fundamental units from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), formerly the National Bureau of Standards.
The metric system has standard prefixes to indicate relative sizes. As we noted above, Scientist A reported that the distance to the Sun was 150,000,000 kilometers. The prefix "kilo" means 1,000, so a kilo meter is 1,000 meters. The table below gives some metric names used in these pages and their definitions.
Metric Prefixes | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
PREFIX | DEFINITION | SCIENTIFIC NOTATION |
PREFIX | DEFINITION | SCIENTIFIC NOTATION |
tera | 1,000,000,000,000 | 1012 | centi | .01 | 10-2 |
giga | 1,000,000,000 | 109 | milli | .001 | 10-3 |
mega | 1,000,000 | 106 | micro | .000001 | 10-6 |
kilo | 1,000 | 103 | nano | .000000001 | 10-9 |
deka | 10 | 101 | pico | .000000000001 | 10-12 |
deci | .1 | 10-1 | femto | .000000000000001 | 10-15 |
Here is a comprehensive list of prefixes from the National Institute of Standards and Techonology (NIST).
A few examples of how to use the metric prefixes:
Even the "world standard" metric system has different versions. Astronomers use a version of the cgs (Centimeter-Gram-Second) system, modified for the immense distances in the Universe and huge masses of astronomical objects. Most physicists are converging on use of the MKS (Meter-Kilogram-Second) version or Systeme Internacionale.
To describe distances and sizes, we define a standard of length.
The cgs unit of length is the centimeter, abbreviated as "cm". A
centimeter is between a third and a half an inch:
As you can see from the diagram, a centimeter is pretty small - not a
very practical unit for the enormous distances in the Universe. If our
Astronomer A had to use centimeters to tell Astronomer B the distance to the
Sun, it would look like this:
There are three special units of distance used by astronomers. These
are the astronomical unit (AU), the
light-year and the
parsec. The astronomical unit is the average distance of the Earth
from the Sun shown above.
A light-year (ly) sounds like a measure
of time, but it is a length - the distance light travels in one year.(We
can use a light-year as a unit of measure because ALL light travels at the
same speed; it is a fundamental constant of the Universe. More about this
later...) So, in one year, light travels:
The name parsec comes from the technique of measuring distance called
parallax. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is about 1.3 pc or
4 light-years away. We'll mostly stick to light-years in these pages, but
you may see stellar distances in pc, distances in the Milky Way Galaxy in
kiloparsecs (kpc), distances to other galaxies in megaparsecs (Mpc)
, and distances to very distant cosmological objects in gigaparsecs
(Gpc).
In addition to these distance units, astronomers use the
Ångstrom(Å) as a measure of size on the atomic scale.
Everyone knows that the astronauts weigh less when they're walking on the Moon than when they're back on Earth. Since the Moon is less massive than the Earth, it's gravitational attraction is smaller. It is essential to have a unit for measuring "amount of stuff" that would be the same everywhere in the Universe. That unit of "stuff" is called mass. So, an astronaut's weight is less on the Moon, but his/her mass is exactly the same. Actually,weight and mass are two different things. Your weight is the gravitational attraction between you and the Earth. (Or whatever planet you may be visiting.) Your mass is a measure of your inertia, your resistance to changes in motion. Here is a nice explanation of mass.
The CGS unit of mass is the gram. It is
much smaller than an ounce:
On the very large (astronomical) scale and the very small (atomic) scale two other units of mass are used. To measure atomic masses the atomic mass unit (amu) is employed. the amu is defined as one-twelfth the mass of a common carbon atom:
slightly less than the mass of a proton. For stars, galaxies, etc. we use the solar-mass
where the "" is the standard astronomical symbol for the sun. The mass of our Milky Way Galaxy is about 1012M.
The CGS unit of time is the second. The
time standard is kept by the NIST using a cesium atomic clock like the
one to the right.
|
Atomic clock at NIST |
Much of astronomy and astrophysics is concerned with understanding the energy generation and luminous energy output from stars, galaxies, etc. The cgs unit of energy is the erg. This is the amount of energy contained in the motion of a 1 gram mass moving with a speed of 1 centimeter/second or about the energy expended by a fly taking off from the wall.
The light output of a star or galaxy is called its luminosity measured in ergs/second. The luminosity of our sun
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