Celestia Forums

While trying to create a new sky full of fictional stars, I have run into a rather fundamental problem, namely, that of Celestia's use of visual magnitudes. It makes sense to use visual as opposed to bolometric magnitudes, don't get me wrong, but I haven't found a way to actually calculate the visual luminosity of a star to get it's visual magnitude. Finding the bolometric magnitude is easy: L = 4 * pi * radius^2 * Stefan-Boltzmann constant * Temperature^4. What I don't know is how to modify this to find the luminosity in the visual range of the EM spectrum; it probably has something to do with changing the limits of integration somewhere in the derivation of the luminosity equation, but I don't have said derivation handy in full, although Wikipedia has the derivation of the Stefan-Boltzmann law, and I don't know where exactly to change the limits, if that's what I do at all. So, any help, guys?

MK

For that pupose there are (empirical) bolometric corrections that one simply applies to convert data in the visual band to bolometric and vice versa.

Here is a reference that I use occasionally. You might have to look for the free version?

Click on attachments to enlarge:





Fridger