A medium sized planet revolves around a medium sized star. The length of one year on the planet is 31.56 million seconds and the mean radius of the nearly circular orbit is 14.96 million kilometers. Assume that the orbit is exactly circular for this question.
The first section of the question asked to find the mass of the star, which ended up being 1.99 x 10^27. The next section asked for the radius of the star, but said no work was required to be shown. Is this a trick question, and if not how do I solve it?How to find the radius of a star given its mass?You need to just know something about stellar classification. So, unless you are in a class where you learn more about stars than just gravity, it is a trick question.
See this table:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_cla鈥?/a>
Convert your mass from units of (I think kilograms) to units of solar masses. How many multiples of our sun's mass is the mass of this star?
Then, look up the type of star in the table I linked you. You will see a range of possible star radii in units of solar radii.
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Arslan...is there any reason you duplicated my advice?How to find the radius of a star given its mass?Check out the chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_cla鈥?/a>
This star is .001 solar masses.
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