How does Celestia determine luminosity of stars?

[Chuft-Captain]

Hi,

bit of a newbie question: Can someone explain how this is done.

Luminosity seems to be displayed for stars, but there's no sign of this in the STC's.

SpectralType, AppMag, and Distance seems to be defined, so perhaps there's some sort of estimate being done based on standard candles to get the luminosity???

Cheers
CC

[Reiko]

And why no stellar mass info?

[bdm]

Hi,

bit of a newbie question: Can someone explain how this is done.

Luminosity seems to be displayed for stars, but there's no sign of this in the STC's.

SpectralType, AppMag, and Distance seems to be defined for all except Visual Binaries, so perhaps there's some sort of estimate being done based on standard candles to get the luminosity???

Luminosity can be calculated from apparent magnitude and distance.

[Chuft-Captain]

Thanks bdm,
I'm not that much of a newbie, so I knew that much already.

I was hoping someone might look at the code and tell me the exact formula used by Celestia, as I assume there's probably a bolometric correction based on the spectral type as well.

[ajtribick]

Actually the displayed luminosity is the visual luminosity and doesn't use a bolometric correction. The planet temperature calculation code (though NOT the comet tail code for some reason) does use a bolometric correction however.