In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region, as a function of time. The light is usually in a particular frequency interval or band. Light curves can be periodic, as in the case of eclipsing binaries, Cepheid variables, other periodic variables, and transiting extrasolar planets, or aperiodic, like the light curve of a nova, a cataclysmic variable star, a supernova or a microlensing event. The study of the light curve, together with other observations, can yield considerable information about the physical process that produces it or constrain the physical theories about it.
Read more about Light Curve: Planetology, Botany
Famous quotes containing the words light and/or curve:
“As I have known them passionate and fine,
The gold for which they leave the golden line
Of lyric is a golden light divine,
Never the gold of darkness from a mine.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)