How do we classify stars?

A.Size

B.Temperature
and Color

C.Brightness
 Temperature and color
 The color of the star is dependent on the temp of the star.
 Red – coolest stars
 Blue – hottest stars

Stars have Different colors

which indicate different
temperatures
 Order from coolest to hottest
 Red, red-orange, yellow, white, blue

3000K 6000K 30,000K

Temperature and Color
 Size
Giants/supergiants- large and very large stars.
Many of these are very far away
White dwarfs-
very small stars –
about the size of
the Earth
Neutron stars-
even smaller stars
– only 20 km in
diameter.
Medium sized
stars- many stars
this size. The size
of our Sun.
 Binary star systems contain two stars
that orbit around their common center
of mass. Many of the stars in our
galaxy are part of a binary system.

Binary Stars are

used to
determine the
mass of the star.
 How do we measure stars?
Parallax- the apparent change in position of
an object when you look at it from different
places.
 Parallax

The closer the star is to Earth, the larger the shift will be
Parallax

Only good for measuring stars

close to us. Not farther than
1000 light years away. Why?

The movement would be

too small to measure
accurately.
 SPEED OF LIGHT
Light travels at a speed of
186,000 miles a second or
300,000,000 meters per
second or 700 million
miles an hour. For scale,
the distance from the
Earth to the Moon is
about 239,000 miles. The
distance light can travel in
a year is called a "light
year." The light year is
one of the basic measures
of distance for astronomy.
Nothing travels faster
than the speed of light.
 Stellar Brightness=magnitude
Apparent Brightness- the brightness
as seen from Earth.
The closer the star is to Earth, the
brighter it will look.
3 factors that control:
1. How big it is
2. How hot it is
3. How far away it is
Absolute Brightness – the amount
of light the star actually gives
off.

2 stars with the

same absolute
magnitude do not
have the same
apparent
H-R Diagram-
diagram
showing the
relationship
between absolute
magnitude/luminosit
y and temperature
of the star
*Temperature on the x axis
*Luminosity/ absolute brightness
on the y axis
H-R Diagram What kind of stars
are cooler than,
(sketch this) but brighter than
the sun?
RED GIANTS

What kind of
stars are bluer
than the sun but
less bright & must
be quite small?
WHITE DWARFS
 Variable Stars
 Cepheid variables - pulsate
in a regular way, rapidly
increasing in brightness as
they increase in size, then
slowly decreasing in
brightness as they decrease
in size. The reason for this
is slight instabilities in
temperature and density

 Nova – sudden brightening

of a star
 Interstellar Matter
 Between stars there are clouds of dust and
gasses = nebulae (Greek for cloud)

•If not close to a star looks like a dark starless region

•If next to a bright star it will light up and glow