Sunday, 30 August 2009

star atlas with absolute magnitude and spectral type

BSC5p may be a nice database to start with.



The parallax (check according box) and vmag will provide a basis for the calculation of the absolute visual magnitude. The absolute visual magnitude may be lower (star may be absolutely brighter), if the extinction isn't negligible.



1/parallax is a good estimate for the distance. Take this distance as an approximate for the luminosity distance, if you can assume negligible extinction. Now calculate the visual magnitude of the star at 10 parsec distance to get the absolute visual magnitude.



Example: Alp1Cen (HR 5459) has vmag -0.01, and parallax 0.751 arc seconds. Therefore the distance is about 1/0.751 = 1.33 parsec. We get absolute visual magnitude
$$ M=m-5cdot (mbox{log}_{10}D_L - 1)=-0.01-5cdot (mbox{log}_{10}1.33 - 1)=4.37.$$



An overview of absolute magnitude and spectral types.



More detailed discussion, and tables can be found in this paper.



More tables.



This book seems to contain a table with values as of 2009, which is cited here.

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