I'm revising a part of the tiering system for Vsbattles. I was looking at the calculation that gave statistics for "baseline" Large Star level and noticed that there wasn't a source for Rigel being 23 solar masses, meanwhile most of them used 17 or 24. Since there were so many differences on the...
It would appear that 21 solar masses is the average with plus or minus 3 being the margin of error. That probably explains why some of the sources cite it as 18 or 24. In that case, perhaps I should just use 21 as the mean.
One such source is wikipedia, currently listing it as 21 plus or minus 3. I do not know how accurate they are. I'm not sure where Google gets their sources, so I can;t give a date. But, they say 18. I'd assume that these 2 numbers come from before 2005, which is the earliest Wikipedia included...
I am doing a relatively important calculation that requires the mass of Rigel. Using the wrong number will change the final result by a fair amount. Much more than a few decimal points.
Of course I understand that all measurements have uncertainty. However not all methods are equal, some are...
I see so many different sources using different masses for Rigel. The most common of the bunch seem to be 17-18 solar masses. There are also a couple that give it 24 Sol masses. One astronomy book even cited it as 23, and another at 20. I cannot stand this discrepancy and would like to know what...