Stellar Statistics

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The stellar statistics is a branch of astronomy that deals with the structure of the star systems , their inner movement conditions and their distribution in space.

With many billions of suns in a star system, it is not possible to examine the speed and physical properties of each object individually. Therefore it is necessary to use a statistical method to investigate mean properties of groups of stars.

The stellar statistics are based on the star catalogs , which each record a large number of stars with their positions and physical state variables . Groups with uniform properties (e.g.  absolute brightness , level of development, spectral class or spatial movement) are selected from this and their number is determined per unit area or in space. The star numbers determined in this way form the basis of the investigations in the context of stellar statistics.

It is also not possible to examine all visible stars in the sky. On the one hand, the constantly evolving observation methods expand the limits of the visible area in space and the apparent brightness , which can still be reliably examined. So it was already decades ago that more than 150 million individual stars in our galaxy could be resolved and theoretically subjected to an individual investigation. In order to limit this effort, calibration fields are created that represent a representative selection of the starry sky and can then be examined individually.

On the findings of the stellar statistics are based u. a. the early findings on the Milky Way system , the structure of which was clarified in the 18th and 19th centuries. Important German contributions to stellar statistics of the 20th century come from Karl Schwarzschild , for example .

See also

literature

  • Rudolf Kurth: Introduction to stellar statistics. Pergamon, Oxford 1967
  • G. Jogesh Babu, Eric D. Feigelson: Astrostatistics. Chapman & Hall, London 1997, ISBN 0-412-98391-5
  • Jasper Wall, CR Jenkins: Practical statistics for astronomers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, ISBN 0-521-45416-6
  • Jeffrey Bennett, Megan Donahue et al .: Astronomy. The cosmic perspective (Ed. Harald Lesch ), Chapters 15 to 18 (pp. 728-860), 5th, updated edition, Pearson Studium Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-8273-7360-1