Astrophysics 101: Sirius B (The Pup) Traditional Geocache
Astrophysics 101: Sirius B (The Pup)
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is the second in a series of caches intended to display the relative sizes of stellar (i.e., star like) objects. The intended scale is 1 kilometer = 1 inch. GC15DXX (The Crab Pulsar) serves as the center reference point for this series of caches.
Sirius B is the White Dwarf companion of the large main sequence star Sirius. These two stars orbit each other at a separation of about 20 Astronomical Units (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) with a period of approximately 50 years. Sirius, often called the 'Dog Star', is the brightest star in the night sky and is located in the constellation Canis Major. Sirius B, because of it's is a small companion to the larger 'Dog Star', is often called 'The Pup'.
A White Dwarf star is the remnant of a low to medium mass main sequence star which has evolved beyond the Red Giant phase. At the end of the red giant phase, the star sheds its outer layers to form a planetary nebula leaving behind the stellar core. This core, typically consisting of a carbon plasma, remains behind as a white dwarf and is supported against gravitational collapse by the repulsion between electrons resulting from the Pauli Exclusion Principle (Fermi-Dirac to rescue once more!).
Sirius B is a relatively large White Dwarf with a mass equal to that of the Sun and a radius about equal to that of the Earth (6300 kilometers). On the scale of this series (1 inch = 1 kilometer), the distance from this cache to the reference point GC15DXX (~0.1 miles) is the equivalent of the radius of Sirius B.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Orjner bs Thneq Qbtf.