What does L star mean in the Schechter function?

[I_laff]

Main Question or Discussion Point

I'm trying to understand the Schechter function, I read on Wikipedia that the L star term in the function is the 'characteristic galaxy luminosity where the power-law form of the function cuts off'. What does this mean exactly?

 

[phyzguy]

It's just an empirical fitting function to the brightness distributions. It's found empirically that the number of galaxies in a certain brightness range increases as a power law at the faint end, but drops off more quickly (exponentially) at the bright end. The L* luminosity is where the function transitions from one behavior to the other. These slides have a nice description.

 

[I_laff]

Thanks for the explanation [emoji846]

 

[CygnusX-1]

L* is the luminosity of a giant galaxy like the Milky Way or Andromeda. Such galaxies are rare, and galaxies much brighter are even rarer.

See this article on super spiral galaxies for more.