The Life of a Star

Abstract

THE letter of Prof. Perry on “The Life of a Star,” published in your issue of July 13, is of interest to astronomers; and as the author of it evidently aims to be fair, I think it worth while to set right a misconception into which he has fallen. His reference to my paper in the Astronomical Journal (No. 455) shows that he has misconstrued the meaning of the symbol K in the formula . That paper was unfortunately very much abbreviated, and as I was not concerned with the analytical investigation of K, this constant was not sufficiently explained. Yet in my first note on this law in the A. J. (453), which he probably overlooked, it was announced that “K is a constant different for each body.” Thus the constant K is not, as Prof. Perry supposes, the same for the whole universe, but varies from star to star, being a function of the mass, specific heat, emissive power, &c., into which we need not go at present.