Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You'll note from the article that this star had a white dwarf companion. Any time two objects are orbiting each other, measuring the orbital period gives you an instant knowledge of the total mass of the system by a trivial application of Newton's law of gravity. All white dwarf stars have pretty much the same mass, so by subtracting that from the total you get the mass of the neutron star. Easy peasy maths  . |
But that just furthers my point, it is 3000 light years away, that's 17,635,876,119,550,824 miles!! And we know there is a white dwarf with it!!
That's mind blowing!!
That's be like me sitting in my house in Ohio with a straw, a pair of binoculars and a slide rule and telling you what SneakySnake had for breakfast in Oz. I understand how it is done, but it is still absolutely amazing!!!