Excercise 1.

During a transit of Venus I measure a displacement angle against the sun of 4 from two locations 5000km apart (in a direction perpendicular to the ecliptic). Which planet am I standing on? 2. Cygnus has absolute and apparent visual magnitudes of Mv = -7,2 and mv = 1,3 with colors of B - V = 0,1 and a Bolometric correction of BC = 0,0. The approximate temperature of Cygnus is about 8500 K. Using reasonable assumptions, estimate the following quantities. Explicitly state any assumptions you are making to do these calculations and why they are reasonable. i. distance to Cygnus ii. physical radius of Cygnus iii. angular size of Cygnus iv. how much energy per cm2 are received on Earth from Cygnus (ignore the atmosphere of Earth) v. how many photons per second per cm2 are received at Earth in the V band from Cygnus? 3. Given the Period-Luminosity relation given in the course notes, determine the distance to a Cepheid variable of peak brightness 20.0 mag given its periodicity is observed to be 2 days. 4. I measure a star moving at 1 per year across the sky, its absolute magnitude is M = +1.0 mag, its apparent magnitude is m = 8.0 mag, and its radial velocity is 50m/s. What is its space motion? What Galactic structure is this object likely to be associated with? 5. A typical giant galaxy contains approximately 50 billion stars. If these stars are all comparable to our sun (i.e. MV = 5.48 mag) what is the absolute magnitude of the typical giant galaxy. 6. Our galaxy has a number of companion galaxies, the faintest of these has an absolute magnitude of -6 mag. How many stars does this approximate to ? 7. Given that there are 102 Ellipticals per Mpc3 and my garden telescope can reach to 14 mag. How large an area of sky would I need to survey to find 100 Elliptical galaxies ? (assume the typical absolute magnitude for an Elliptical galaxy is -21 mag). 8. Assumming that in the local Universe there is roughly 1 galaxy per sq deg brighter than 14th magnitude, calculate the mass density of Elliptical galaxies in solar masses per Mpc3, assuming that their mass-to-light ratios are 10 MSUN/LSUN? 9. The number density of Spiral galaxies is about five times larger than that of Elliptical galaxies. However Elliptical galaxies, on average, have an absolute magnitude 1 mag brighter. Assuming that their mass-to-light ratios are the same, which population contributes most to the mass density ? 10. The distance to the Virgo cluster is measured to be 30 Mpc and our infall velocity is estimated to be 1200kms-1. We want to measure the Hubble constant so all we need now is the spectroscopic redshift to the central elliptical. Unfortunately wires got crossed and at the telescope we ended up measuring the spectra of the central elliptical in Coma (z=0.064). Thankfully we know that the brightest elliptical in Coma is 5 mags fainter than the brightest elliptical in Virgo. What is the value of the Hubble constant ?

11. A spiral galaxy of apparent magnitude 16 mags lies at a distance of 100 Mpc. The half-light radius, as measured along the major axis, is observed to be 20. At this radius the line-of-sight rotational velocity is observed to be 100kms1. If the observed axis ratio is 2. Deduce: i) The absolute magnitude of the galaxy, ii) The radius of the velocity measurement from the galaxys centre in kpc, iii) The inclination of the galaxy, iv) The effective edge-on rotational velocity at the major axis half-light radius 12. The most massive super-massive black hole known has a mass of around 109 MSUN, calculate its Schwartzchild radius in solar units. 13. If I observe that a star near the Galactic Centre takes 15 years to complete an orbit and has a mean orbital diameter of 0.01 parsecs. Calculate an upper limit to the mass of any central super-massive black hole. 14. If the Universe was found to be 10 Gyrs old what would be the required value for the Hubble constant assuming it does not vary with time? 15. If the Universe started to recollapse today how would we first detect this.