Minimum mass

In astronomy, minimum mass is the lower-bound calculated mass of objects like planets, stars, nebulae, and black holes.

Minimum mass is used a lot for extrasolar planets discovered by the radial velocity method. It is found using the binary mass function.

Minimum Mass Media

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  A view of inclination that would appear flat upon the green plane from Earth.

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  Unit circle: the radius has length 1. The variable t measures the angle referred to as θ in the text.

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  Animation showing how the sine function (in red) y = \sin(\theta) is graphed from the y-coordinate (red dot) of a point on the unit circle (in green) at an angle of θ.