Recent content by Astro Student

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    Other Questioning future plans & low grades this semester

    Thanks for your reply. I am hoping to get a B.S. in physics and astrophysics. I suppose, simply put, that I am at a crossroads between continuing onto physics grad school, medical school, or perhaps a mixture of the two (biophysics/bioinformatics).
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    Other Questioning future plans & low grades this semester

    Hello Physics Forums members, I've had a somewhat rough semester. My sister had a lot of medical issues pop up and I wasn't able to pay enough attention to my classes as I'd have liked. I'm actually pre-med, and was enrolled in organic chemistry. Flatly, the current best-case scenario for...
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    Unit Conversion of Flux: Jansky to Erg/s/cm²/Å - Simplified Guide

    This makes a lot of sense. I was able to check using some knowledge from the textbook that a zero-magnitude star receives 1000 photons at 550nm per second per cm^2 per Angstrom. The energy of these photons was equivalent to the flux of a zero-magnitude star in the V band (3640 Jy). Thank you!
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    Unit Conversion of Flux: Jansky to Erg/s/cm²/Å - Simplified Guide

    Thanks for the reply. I am still very confused; this is giving me units of per meter per second. Should I be integrating this then over all frequencies/wavelengths? I also now have a factor of -c with which I do not know what to do, since the flux should not be negative.
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    Unit Conversion of Flux: Jansky to Erg/s/cm²/Å - Simplified Guide

    Hello, I am struggling a little bit with what I believe to be a simple unit conversion. For this problem, I have many fluxes given in units of Janskys. I would like to convert them from their original units of Jy = 10-23 erg s-1 cm-2 Hz-1 to units of erg s-1 cm-2 Angstrom-1 When I try to do...
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    I Plotting the orbits of the planets

    Ahhh I never thought Matlab would do such a thing to me! Thank you very much, everything looks great now that I've set my own scales! :smile: As an aside would you or anybody else happen to know why Earth has a longitude of ascending node -11.26064 degrees? If this were true, then what the heck...
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    I Plotting the orbits of the planets

    Hello everybody! Long-time lurker and second-time posting. I'm working on a project for my math class, and I'm trying to plot the orbits of the planets using vectors. I've chosen to use MATLAB because I am decently familiar with it. I've used the formulas described in this post here to get my...
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    Schools Optics for High School Senior at Ohio State Univ.

    I think I phrased the original context badly. I understand most conceptual things, such as why things happen. When it comes to the mathematical derivations however, I'm frequently confused as to what is going on. I think it may have to do with astrophysics' involving a lot of vector and...
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    Schools Optics for High School Senior at Ohio State Univ.

    I'm a high school senior taking classes at Ohio State University. I'm currently enrolled in Basic Astrophysics and Planetary Astronomy, and have already decided to take Stellar, Galactic, & Extragalactic Astronomy & Astrophysics (wow that is LONG!) next semester. I've been looking at other...
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    Nothing anymore. Thank you very much!
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    It's looks similar. In the equation in comment 2 I would assume number density and cross section were combined into a single constant.
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    lnI = -nσ dx + C1. If I use the knowledge that at x = 0 I = I0 we can use differential equations (I worked them out on a sheet of paper) to get C1 = lnI0 and then I(x) = I0e-nσx. I think...
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    Another formula in my textbook says ΔI/Δ = -(nSΔx)σ/S = -nσΔx. σ here is the cross-section, Δx the thickness, and n the number density. For the sake of this problem, the number density and cross-section would remain constant with Δx as the only independent variable to change ΔI/I. Would this be...
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    Yes, I mistyped it. Both I and tau should be functions of x according to my textbook. I'm still not finding a formula for absorption of light by a solid anywhere in my textbook, only for gases.
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    Glass Thickness for Light Absorption: 90%, 99%, 99.9%

    So the quantity that we are trying to measure here is intensity? I do see a formula in my textbook saying I(z) = I0e-τ(x). Could that be it? EDIT: This actually appears to be a formula for intensity through a medium of gas. Nevermind.
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