Talk:Solar mass

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(Mass of Protostar?)

(nonrandom heading inserted ... said: Rursus (bork²) 08:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC))[reply]

How Do Find Solar Mass For Protostar?

Thank You.

-Mike

A few points-

There are many ways of calculating the mass of our Sun. I suggest adding a few more equalities, complete with derivations or explanations. The derivations are very important, especially for those not familiar with the subject matter.

Yes, the Solar Mass does persist as "one of astronomy's ... historical conventions," but it is highly useful because it is so easy to visualize compared to many other celestial masses and is therefore a convention that should stick, at least until we find a more useful one. I would hardly call it an "arcane" convention.

It is possible to write a mass as a length through the tools of General Relativity, but it is at best occasionally useful or worthwhile. I suggest making note of this in the article instead of listing it as "common."

Prometheusindisguise (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Re: the "arcane" thing. "solar mass" is used everyday in the peer-reviewed astronomy primary literature, so it doesn't count as arcane in the old-fashioned sense; moreover, "solar mass" is an easy to visualize quantity, so it's not arcane in the esoteric sense either. Besides, the sentence contradicts the first sentence of the article that says the solar mass is a "standard" unit. Therefore, I'm going to delete that whole sentence. Sorry.Warren Platts (talk) 02:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Conventional vs. actual?

Ehhm, it occurred to me that if the Solar mass is used as a nonstandard unit, the size of that unit quantity should be separate from the actual Solar mass, like the metre is standardized on an obsolete value of Earth radius. But that is a scientific ideal, which may or may not be implemented in reality (keeping in mind the science-philosophical and linguistic sloppyness of the current weird IAU definition of planet). So, now:

is the conventional unit "Solar mass" fixed?
or does it bounce around randomly depending on the measurements of the actual Solar mass?

If the earlier, the article should be structured acc2 that there are two "Solar mass" concepts. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 08:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Solar mass would only change if the gravitational constant (G) changed. The quantity G*M(sun) is known highly accurately from measurement of the orbital parameters of the planets. The value for G is known only to a few significant figures and as such the mass of the sun is only known to roughly the same precision. Unlike the meter, which is now defined in terms of the speed of light (a constant) and a time (a certain number of oscillations of cesium), the suns mass is effectively defined by the standard gravitational parameter (a measured value) and the gravitational constant (another measured value). So, to answer your questions: no, and kind of. 68.197.129.9 (talk) 23:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Solar mass is continually decreasing; about 4 million tons per second due to nuclear fusion, and about 2 million tons per second due to the solar wind. This is negligible compared to the total solar mass for short-term calculations. --IanOsgood (talk) 05:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stub

Wikipedia:Stub category applies to those articles with no more than "rudimentary" information.

While very short articles are likely to be stubs, there are some subjects about which there is very little that can be written.
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This article is not a stub, there's just not much more that should be written, more could, but it would be "inflation" for the sake of it. If you really think it can never be more than a stub, then {{Copy to Wiktionary}}. HarryAlffa (talk) 11:24, 21 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]