Questions tagged [units]
Use for questions about standards of measurement used for different types of quantities, and for conversions between units.
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I need clarity on the units in this flux equation
I have the following equation used to calculate line flux from equivalent width.
$F_{line}=EW \times F_{cont}$
If $EW$, the equivalent width of a line is in Angstroms, and $F_{cont}$, the continuum ...
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Calculating luminosity from SED
I have an SED with wavelength in microns, and fluxes in mJy. I try the following code but my derived luminosity is a factor of 2 less (I should get 2.5e-3 L_sun). I think I am converting the fluxes ...
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Consistent values for density of galaxies between degree squared and steradian
I have a table of densities of galaxies :
Expected number density of galaxies for photometric survey per unit area and redshift intervals, $\mathrm{d} N / \mathrm{d} \Omega \mathrm{d} z\left[\mathrm{...
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What is value of charge by mass ratio (q/m) for a spherical micro charged particle with surface potential 6 volts in S.I units and in e/amu units?
In Liu and Ip (2014),The Astrophysical Journal, 786:34 (8pp), the value of q/m is derived as follows :
"for a dust grain with radius 'a', from $\phi = \frac{4\pi q}{\varepsilon_0 a}$ we have $\...
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When analyzing a particle moving at Kepler speed, √(GM/R) in a planetary magnetic field, do we need to convert it to angular speed, √(GM/R^3)?
A charged particle is moving in a planetary magnetic field, in a spherical polar coordinates which is corotating with the magnetic field. To solve the equations of motion numerically what would be the ...
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How to convert mW/m^2 to W/m^2/nm?
I have a vizier catalog with H-alpha fluxes as logF(Haplha) in units as mW/m^2. See sample data here: http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-3?-source=J/MNRAS/431/2/fluxes
How do I convert ...
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Using Gaia Passbands with L_nu coordinates
I am trying to find the coordinates of my bundles of gas on the gaia ($G, G_{bp}-G_{rp}$) hr diagram. I have its spectrum in $\nu L_\nu$ coordinates. Thus far, my attempts have mainly been to ...
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How do nuJ(nu) units work?
I'm working with (Nublado) Cloudy, which is essentially a spectral modelling tool for stellar matter. Using the software, I model my own stellar object and obtain its continuum.
According to Hazy, ...
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What is the unit of the correlation function between logarithmically rebinned galaxy spectrum and stellar template spectrum?
Assume I have a logarithmically rebinned galactic spectrum $G(x)$ and a stellar template spectrum $S(x)$, where $x = \ln{\lambda}$. When $[\lambda] = 1 Å$, then $[x] = 1 Np/Å$. The fourier transformed ...
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How to convert Flux Density to Flux?
I have a radio catalogue with flux density values. (Jy/bm) I'm confused converting this value to flux. Because I want to calculate luminosity, I need flux values. The unit made me confused. Since I ...
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Conversion to Jy of Hubble WFC3 units (electrons/s) and of Spitzer IRAC (MJy/sr)
I am trying to figure out how to convert the units of some FITS files to Jy. These files refer to observations in different bands using different instruments. I list them below with my way of ...
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Units in distance parallax relation
Relation between distance d and paralax plx is:
$$d (pc) = 1 / plx(arc)$$
When I want to express plx in mas, will it be
$$d (pc) = 1/[plx(mas)*1000]$$
or
$$d (pc) = 1000/plx(mas)$$
Thank you very much
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What does using these units (c=G=M=1) in MHD simulations mean?
I was reading some papers on numerical HD/MHD simulations of black hole accretion disks, and most of them scale their physical quantities to this form of units: c = G = M = 1. I know c = 1 and G = 1 ...
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How do I create a comoving quantity using YT?
I can assign a unit to a scalar using:
x = YTQuantity(scalar, 'kpc')
but how would I specify that the unit should be kpccm? Perhaps it doesn't even make sense to do so? Something as simple as this is ...
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What does par. lines mean in relation to a telescope aperture in 19th century German astronomical publications?
I am trying to understand what is meant by par. lines in an 1867 article "The Aberration of the fixed stars after the wave theory" by Prof. W. Klinkerfues of Royal Astronomy Works of ...
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Astropy units issue
hope you're all doing well.
I'm not very familiarized with AstroPy and I'm having a problem computing the conversion between angular momentum units.
If I define the ...
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How to calculate an infrared SED from the specific intensities?
I have values of total infrared fluxes (SED) in literature expressed in Jy (Jansky) for galaxies. I want to assure that my infrared radial profiles of the same galaxies in MJy/sr (and other in Jy/...
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Convert from Jy/beam km/s to W/m$^2$
I need to compare some ALMA observations of a protoplanetary disk to disk-integrated fluxes obtained from a model.
The ALMA observations are upper limits of non-detected spectral lines, where the RMS ...
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Flux Density Unit Conversion [closed]
I am confused how to convert from ${\rm cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}\,Å^{-1}}$ to ${\rm erg\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}\,Å^{-1}}$. How do I do that?
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Rayleighs units conversion
I have a question regarding the units conversion from photon counts on a detector to Rayleighs. I am pretty new to the subject but I would like to know more.
The problem is the following :
I know that ...
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RA expressed in degrees
Using the Python package Skyfield I thought that I could get the RA expressed in degrees simply by doing ra.degrees, but I get the following message
this angle is usually expressed in hours, not ...
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Units and some equations
I'm a grad student and I feel like this is an extremely elementary question that I should know, but I admit that I don't. Occasionally in science I find myself solving an equation for some answer ...
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Mathamatica vs Sympy and Astropy to solve basic astronomy problems: solving linear equations and unit conversion
I realize this may be slightly off topic, but I also believe this is probably the best way to get an answer to my question:
What is the best combination of software packages / programming languages to ...
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Unit problem regards to proton
In a textbook, we have an example:
The density of matter in the interstellar medium is of order one
proton per ${\rm cm^3}$, then the total mass of the interstellar
medium is of order (The $10^6$ ...
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Converting from $\mathrm{W \: m^{-2}}$ to $\mathrm{Jy \: km \: s^{-1}}$
Suppose I observe a spectral line with rest frequency $\nu_0$ and integrated flux density $F = 10^{-26} \mathrm{W/m^2}$. Is the following line of reasoning correct?
$1 \: \mathrm{Jy} = 10^{-26} \: \...
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What does BJD-2450000 mean?
In different papers I've encountered time indications in BJD-2450000. I know that BJD stands for Barycentric Julian Date, but I don't understand the meaning of the suffix -2450000.
This is an example ...
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How to use spectral flux density data while using Planck's law giving spectral radiance?
I'm currently working on a fun project in my free time where I'm trying to calculate the temperature, among other things, of stars based on their spectra. Since I have essentially no prior experience ...
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Flux density from brightness map
This is a naive question. I have a temperature map of radio emission at 1420 MHz, in Kelvin. I want to extract the flux density (in Janskys) from an extended region of this map.
Is the flux density ($...
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'Little h' usage in cosmological simulations
I am running a cosmological simulation and am having some trouble putting things into code units. The physical distance units in my simulation are in terms of $\text{Mpc/h}$, where $h$ is the ...
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Units confusion while calculating flux of a star using distance and luminosity, Python
I am trying to calculate the flux of various stars in Python. I am using the information from a database containing all stars in Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star, and Gliese catalogs (almost 120,000 stars)....
user30617
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Correct units to use while plotting mollweide projection of sky chart with RA and Dec values, matplotlib
I am trying to plot a mollweide projection of a sky chart in Python using the matplotlib package. I am using the RA and Dec values from a database containing all stars in Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star, ...
user30617
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How to convert from Black body intensity to MJy/sr?
How does one convert from ${\rm ergs\cdot cm^{-2}\cdot s^{-1} \cdot sr^{-1}\cdot Hz^{-1}}$ to ${\rm MJy \cdot sr^{-1}}$
and from ${\rm ergs\cdot cm^{-2}\cdot s^{-1} \cdot sr^{-1}\cdot cm^{-1}}$ to ${\...
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Neutrino Modelling in Friedmann Equation
I'm trying to model neutrinos in the Friedmann Equation. I've covered the case of the Benchmark Model where we have matter, radiation, curvature, and the cosmological constant, Lambda. I know my ...
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How to convert apparent visual magnitude to SI units?
How do I convert the apparent visual magnitude of astronomical objects to SI units (lumens)?
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How to convert from FELO-HEL to Km/s?
I am using DS9 to calculate the rotational velocity of a galaxy. I have 21cm cube and I used DS9 to plot this graph
I do not understand what is FELO-HEL! and I want to convert the units from FELO-...
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What is "g-98" in plots of stellar spectra?
I was looking to find some example carbon star spectra and came across this page on the Harvard website which shows several plots of carbon star spectra. The horizontal axis is labelled as wavelength ...
user24157
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What does it mean when there are two plus-or-minus signs for a measurement?
As far as I know, the plus-or-minus sign is used to indicate the statistical margin of error of a measurement. But what does it mean when there are two plus-or-minus signs in the same measurement?
...
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Conversion factors for flux
I have a flux value in the infrared band of 8 mJy at a wavelength of 80 microns that I want to translate into X-ray conventional ...
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A "strange" unit radio astronomy
I'm reading up on radio astronomy, and I came across this paper from 1964. At the bottom of page 193, the author uses a unit that I've not seen before in discussing radio power emission from stars:
...
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Conversion of UBVRIJHK magnitudes to luminosity?
So, I know that the standard for conversion from bolometric magnitude to luminosity established in 2015 equates to:
L = 10^(-0.4 * magnitude) * 3.0128e28
Easy ...
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Units in optical and radio spectral data cubes: Flux vs Brightness
I have noticed that the units used in spectral data cubes coming from optical IFU instruments are usually in $erg/s/cm^2/Ang/pixel$. To my understanding this is a measure of Flux. Right?
However, in ...
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Converting Jy/beam to Jy?
Maybe its a dumb question, but to convert Jy/beam to Jy, I just have to multiply it by the beam size in sr right?
Being $\Omega$ the beam size:
$\Omega = \frac{\pi \theta_{maj} ~~ \theta_{min}}{4 \...
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Finding the radius of a star in arcsec
If i know the radius r of a star in cm, how can I convert it to arcseconds?
For example, if I have a star with r = 3.18e13 cm, and distance to the star d = 220 parsecs, what is the relation to ...
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How to convert density from physical unit to comoving unit?
I am learning co-moving units and I am interested to see how the conversion works. If Hubble constant is assumed to be 0.7, then I want to convert $1gm/cm^3$ into comoving unit. If I want to express ...
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Units of integrated flux density (irradiance) along longitudes
If I've taken an image of the Galactic bulge with the pixel units in MJ per steradian:
and I've looked down each column of the image and added up the values:
then do the units change? My thinking is ...
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Astrodynamic Canonical Units [closed]
Maybe this is more appropriate for the Physics or Maths, but anyway.
I am struggling with applying Canonical units with formulas. I am struggling specifically with how they are used, am I to convert ...
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Natural units of star clusters angular momentum and energy
I'm calculating the total angular momentum of a bunch of theoretical stars of a few solar masses, separated by a few light years, moving at velocities of about a few dozens of km / sec.
Mechanical ...
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How are people converting intensities in Janskys to Kelvin?
I'm reading some ALMA proposals and I am often seeing a conversion from Jy to Kelvin when, for example, people quote noise levels or source flux.
For example on their sensitivity calculator
(https://...
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Why don't astronomers use meters to measure astronomical distances?
In astronomy distances are generally expressed in non-metric units like: light-years, astronomical units (AU), parsecs, etc. Why don't they use meters (or multiples thereof) to measure distances, as ...
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wavelength-based IFU data cubes VS velocity-based IFU data cubes
I have 2 simulated IFU data cubes of the same observation, let's say A and B. The 3rd dimension of cube A is in wavelengths. In order to create cube B I just rebinned cube A in log-wavelengths and ...
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