3 ms·
Oh, sorry, that is pretty confusing. SMBH stands for "supermassive black hole." BH on its own usually refers to a stellar mass black hole. (Astronomers have
by antognini 9y ago
Oh, sorry, that is pretty confusing. SMBH stands for "supermassive black hole." BH on its own usually refers to a stellar mass black hole. (Astronomers have lots of weird conventions.)
- Pxtl 9y agoLike using scientific notation for 1000 and 100,000?
- infogulch 9y agoIn those two cases scientific notation may not be very helpful. But consider that astronomers could very easily be comparing them to many other numbers with a huge range of magnitude, and it makes sense to just use it everywhere. Also scientific notation conveys the real precision where just "1000" could mean "1000 +-1” or "1000 +-1000", which by itself can be even more important than any other reason.