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Infrared Excess
An infrared excess is a measurement of an astronomical source, typically a star, that in their spectral energy distribution has a greater measured infrared flux than expected by assuming the star is a blackbody radiator. Infrared excesses are often the result of circumstellar dust heated by starlight and reemitted at longer wavelengths. They are common in young stellar objects and evolved stars on the asymptotic giant branch or older. In addition, monitoring for infrared excess emission from stellar systems is one possible method that could enable a search for large-scale stellar engineering projects of a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization; for example a Dyson sphere A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy re ... or Dyson swarm. This infrared excess would be the o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sky, night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed stars, fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterism (astronomy), asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated to stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy. A star's life star formation, begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material largely comprising hydrogen, helium, and traces of heavier elements. Its stellar mass, total mass mainly determines it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spectral Energy Distribution
A spectral energy distribution (SED) is a plot of energy versus frequency or wavelength of light (not to be confused with a 'spectrum' of flux density vs frequency or wavelength). It is used in many branches of astronomy to characterize astronomical sources. For example, in radio astronomy they are used to show the emission from synchrotron radiation, free-free emission and other emission mechanisms. In infrared astronomy, SEDs can be used to classify young stellar objects. Detector for spectral energy distribution The count rates observed from a given astronomical radiation source have no simple relationship to the flux from that source, such as might be incident at the top of the Earth's atmosphere. This lack of a simple relationship is due in no small part to the complex properties of radiation detectors. These detector properties can be divided into *those that merely attenuate the beam, including *#residual atmosphere between source and detector, *#absorption in the d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infrared
Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those of red light (the longest waves in the visible spectrum), so IR is invisible to the human eye. IR is generally (according to ISO, CIE) understood to include wavelengths from around to . IR is commonly divided between longer-wavelength thermal IR, emitted from terrestrial sources, and shorter-wavelength IR or near-IR, part of the solar spectrum. Longer IR wavelengths (30–100 μm) are sometimes included as part of the terahertz radiation band. Almost all black-body radiation from objects near room temperature is in the IR band. As a form of EMR, IR carries energy and momentum, exerts radiation pressure, and has properties corresponding to both those of a wave and of a particle, the photon. It was long known that fires e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radiative Flux
Radiative flux, also known as radiative flux density or radiation flux (or sometimes power flux density), is the amount of power radiated through a given area, in the form of photons or other elementary particles, typically expressed in watts per square meter (W/m2). It is used in astronomy to determine the magnitude and spectral class of a star and in meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ... to determine the intensity of the convection in the planetary boundary layer. Radiative flux also acts as a generalization of heat flux, which is equal to the radiative flux when restricted to the infrared spectrum. When radiative flux is incident on a surface, it is often called irradiance. Flux emitted from a surface may be called radiant exitance or radiant emit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackbody Radiation
Black-body radiation is the thermal electromagnetic radiation within, or surrounding, a body in thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment, emitted by a black body (an idealized opaque, non-reflective body). It has a specific continuous spectrum that depends only on the body's temperature., Chapter 13. A perfectly-insulated enclosure which is in thermal equilibrium internally contains blackbody radiation and will emit it through a hole made in its wall, provided the hole is small enough to have a negligible effect upon the equilibrium. The thermal radiation spontaneously emitted by many ordinary objects can be approximated as blackbody radiation. Of particular importance, although planets and stars (including the Earth and Sun) are neither in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings nor perfect black bodies, blackbody radiation is still a good first approximation for the energy they emit. The term ''black body'' was introduced by Gustav Kirchhoff in 1860. Blackbody radiati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circumstellar Dust
Circumstellar dust is cosmic dust around a star. It can be in the form of a spherical shell or a disc, e.g. an accretion disk. Circumstellar dust can be responsible for significant extinction and is usually the source of an infrared excess for stars that have it. For some evolved stars on the asymptotic giant branch, the dust can be composed of silicate emissions. According to a study, it is still uncertain whether the dust is a result of crystalline silicate or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon. However, recent observations revealed that Vega-type stars display broad silicate emission. It is suggested that the circumstellar dust components can depend on the evolutionary stage of a star and is related to the changes in its physical conditions. The study of the composition of this dust is dubbed astrominerology. The circumstellar dust around aging stars has been observed to include, "almost pure crystalline Mg-rich silicates (forsterite and clinoenstatite), amorphous silicates, diop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Young Stellar Object
Young stellar object (YSO) denotes a star in its early stage of evolution. This class consists of two groups of objects: protostars and pre-main-sequence stars. Classification by spectral energy distribution A star forms by accumulation of material that falls in to a protostar from a circumstellar disk or envelope. Material in the disk is cooler than the surface of the protostar, so it radiates at longer wavelengths of light producing excess infrared emission. As material in the disk is depleted, the infrared excess decreases. Thus, YSOs are usually classified into evolutionary stages based on the slope of their spectral energy distribution in the mid-infrared, using a scheme introduced by Lada (1987). He proposed three classes (I, II and III), based on the values of intervals of spectral index \alpha \,: \alpha=\frac. Here \lambda \, is wavelength, and F_\lambda is flux density. The \alpha \, is calculated in the wavelength interval of 2.2–20 m ( near- and mid-infrared r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asymptotic Giant Branch
The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) is a region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram populated by evolved cool luminous stars. This is a period of stellar evolution undertaken by all low- to intermediate-mass stars (about 0.5 to 8 solar masses) late in their lives. Observationally, an asymptotic-giant-branch star will appear as a bright red giant with a luminosity ranging up to thousands of times greater than the Sun. Its interior structure is characterized by a central and largely inert core of carbon and oxygen, a shell where helium is undergoing fusion to form carbon (known as helium burning), another shell where hydrogen is undergoing fusion forming helium (known as hydrogen burning), and a very large envelope of material of composition similar to main-sequence stars (except in the case of carbon stars). Stellar evolution When a star exhausts the supply of hydrogen by nuclear fusion processes in its core, the core contracts and its temperature increases, causing the oute ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-AGB
A post-AGB star (pAGB, abbreviation of post-asymptotic giant branch) is a type of luminous supergiant star of intermediate mass in a very late phase of stellar evolution. The post-AGB stage occurs after the asymptotic giant branch (AGB or second-ascent red giant) has ended. The stage sees the dying star, initially very cool and large, shrink and heat up. The duration of the post-AGB stage varies based on the star's initial mass, and can range from 100,000 years for a solar-mass star to just over 1,000 years for more massive stars. The timescale gets slightly shorter with lower metallicity. Towards the end of this stage, post-AGB stars also tend to produce protoplanetary nebulae as they shed their outer layers, and this creates a large infrared excess and obscures the stars in visible light. After reaching an effective temperature of about , the star is able to ionise its surrounding nebula, producing a true planetary nebula. Properties Post-AGB stars span a large range of tempera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dyson Sphere
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. The first modern imagining of such a structure was by Olaf Stapledon in his science fiction novel '' Star Maker'' (1937). The concept was later explored by the physicist Freeman Dyson in his 1960 paper "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation". Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilization and would be a necessity for its long-term surviva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space
Space is a three-dimensional continuum containing positions and directions. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions. Modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as '' spacetime''. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. In the 19th and 20th centuries mathematicians began to examine geometries that are non-Euclidean, in which space is conceived as '' curved'', rather than '' flat'', as in the Euclidean space. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space around gravitational fields deviates from Euclidean space. Experimental tests of general relativity have confirmed that non-Euclidean geometries provide a bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
