An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
English-French-Persian

In → stellar dynamics studies of → three-body encounters, a → binary system whose → binding energy is smaller than the typical → kinetic energy of the relative motion of an incoming third body. See also → hard binary.

→ soft; → binary.

A binary system that cannot be resolved by a telescope, but can be identified by means of the Doppler shift of the spectral lines. As stars revolve, they alternately approach and recede in the line of sight. This motion is shown up in their spectra as a periodic oscillation or doubling of spectral lines.

→ spectroscopic; → binary.

→ close binary star.

→ tight; → bound system; → binary star.

An engine or motor in which the → kinetic energy of a moving → fluid (water, steam, air, or hot gases) acts on the blades, vanes, or buckets of a → rotor to produce rotational motion that can be converted into electrical or mechanical power. In an impulse turbine the turbine is driven by free jets of fluid striking the blades. In a reaction turbine the turbine is driven by the reactive force of a fluid passing through the rotor blades. Turbines are used in hydroelectric power generators, ship propulsion systems, and jet aircraft engines.

From Fr. turbine, from L. turbinem (nominative turbo) "spinning top, eddy, whirlwind," related to turba "turmoil, crowd."

Turbin, loan from Fr., as above.

A new kind of optical telescope with a 8.4-m diameter → primary mirror currently under construction in Chile and scheduled to begin operations in October 2023. Initially named Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), it will use a 3200 megapixel camera and an automated data processing system. It will have a large → field of view almost 10 square degrees of sky, or 40 times the size of the full moon. The LSST will move quickly between images to rapidly → survey the sky. From its mountain top site in the Andes (Cerro Pachon, a 2,682-m high mountain in Coquimbo Region), the LSST will take more than 800 panoramic images each night with its 3.2 billion-pixel camera, recording the entire visible sky twice each week. Each patch of sky it images will be visited 1000 times during the survey, each of its 30-second observations will be able to detect objects 10 million times fainter than visible with the human eye. The LSST's combination of telescope, mirror, camera, → data processing, and survey will capture changes in billions of faint objects. Hence, the data it provides will be used to create an animated, three-dimensional cosmic map with unprecedented depth and detail. This map will serve many purposes, from locating the → dark matter and characterizing the properties of the → dark energy, to tracking transient objects, to studying our own Milky Way Galaxy in depth. It will even be used to detect and track → potentially hazardous asteroids that might impact the Earth.

Named after Vera C. Rubin (1928-2016) whose work on galaxy rotation rates supported the existence of dark matter in galactic halos.

A → binary system of stars whose components can be resolved telescopically and which have detectable orbital motion.

→ visual; → binary.

A binary system with semi-major axis as large as 10,000 → astronomical units.

→ wide; → binary.

A binary star system where one of the stars has evolved and collapsed into an extremely dense body such as a → white dwarf, a → neutron star, or a → black hole. The enormous gravitational attraction of the massive, dense, but dim component pulls material from the brighter, less massive star in an → accretion disk. The gravitational potential energy of the accreted matter is converted to heat by → viscosity and eventually to high-energy photons in the X-ray range. The brightest X-ray binary is → Scorpius X-1.

→ X-ray; → binary.