Minimum mass

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The term minimum mass refers to the detected objects with a lower-bound calculated mass. The example of minimum mass is for extrasolar planets, because most extrasolar planets were detected by the wobble method, which detects planets by detecting changes in toward or away movement of stars in the line of sight, in which real inclination were not calculated. If inclination becomes known, the true mass will be calculated using the following formula:

The other examples of minimum mass usage are black holes, binary systems, and nebulae.

[edit] References

• Minimum mass of a black hole. Physics Forum (2004-12-09). Retrieved on 2008-05-24.
• "A Minimum-Mass Extrasolar Nebula" (09-2004). The American Astronomical Society 612 (2): 1147-1151. 
• "The minimum mass ratio of W UMa-type binary systems" (June 2007). Blackwell Syergy 377 (4): 1635-1637.