Is there a way to estimate the mass of a star if it isn't in a binary system, if you know its visual luminosity, surface temperature and radius?
Help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Chaos
Estimating the mass of stars
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granthutchison
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Odd that you'd have this information without a spectral class, since temperature's usually derived from spectral class. There are a lot of look-up tables you could use to find the approximate mass for a given spectral class; for instance, here: http://www.spacegear.org/data/SCTable/.
There's also an approximate mass-luminosity relationship you can use for main sequence stars, but the bolometric luminosity is required for that. So you're back to using a look-up table for the bolometric correction for a given temperature (though you can estimate it mathematically from the black-body spectrum, it's a bit of a faff). I haven't found an on-line version of that, unfortunately.
Grant
There's also an approximate mass-luminosity relationship you can use for main sequence stars, but the bolometric luminosity is required for that. So you're back to using a look-up table for the bolometric correction for a given temperature (though you can estimate it mathematically from the black-body spectrum, it's a bit of a faff). I haven't found an on-line version of that, unfortunately.
Grant