Abstract
III. TO proceed farther we must have recourse to the study of eclipsing variable stars. Methods for computing their orbits have been developed at Princeton during the last few years,20 the main motive for the investigation being the astrophysical importance of the results. Dr. Shapley, using the methods devised by the speaker, has obtained elements for eighty-seven such systems,21 for each one of which the density of the components may be calculated. The values here employed are those which result from the assumption that the stars present discs darkened toward the edge, like the sun, but to a still higher degree, and the principal uncertainty of the results (which in any case cannot be very serious) arises from our present ignorance of the actual degree of this darkening. For our present purpose, they may be best utilised by computing the absolute magnitudes which the brighter component of each system would have if its mass and surface brightness were equal to those of the sun, leaving outstanding the differences due to density alone.
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References
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Relations between the Spectra and other Characteristics of the Stars ast; . Nature 93, 281–286 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093281a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093281a0