Glossary of Astronomical Terms/mass-luminosity law

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The mass-luminosity law is a result of the physics that describes the state of a main sequence star. As such stars have a simpler physical state than others, we're able to create a relation between the star's luminosity with its mass in the relation of:

$L=M^{3.8}$

Note that this formula is in units of the sun's luminosity and the sun's mass. A star that is 10,000 times more luminous than the sun, has a mass of 13.895 solar masses.

One use of this relation, lead to the current dark matter mystery of today.