Stars

Binary Star

A binary star is one of two stars revolving around a common center of mass under their mutual gravitational attraction. Binary stars are used to determine the star property most difficult to calculate—its mass.

Constellation

A constellation is an apparent group of stars originally named for mythical characters.

Light Year

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.5 trillion kilometers.

Main-sequence star

A main-sequence star is a star that falls into the main sequence category on the H-R diagram.

Nebulae

A nebula is a cloud of gas and/or dust in space; where stars are born (star nursery).

Nova

A nova is a star that explosively increases in brightness.

Red Giant

A red giant is a large, cool star of high luminosity; it occupies the upper-right portion of the H-R diagram.

Super Giant

A supergiant is a very large, very bright red giant star.

Absolute magnitude

Absolute magnitude is the apparent brightness of a star if it were viewed from a distance of 32.6 light-years.

Apparent magnitude

Apparent magnitude is the brightness of a star when viewed from Earth. Three factors control the apparent brightness of a star as seen from Earth: how big it is, how hot it is, and how far away it is.

List the factors that determine a star's apparent magnitude

how big, how far away, how bright it is

Describe the relationship shown on a HR diagram

relationship between the absolute magnitude and temperature of stars.

Explain how distance affects parallax

slight shifting of the apparent position of a star due to the orbital motion of Earth. The nearest stars have the largest parallax angles, while those of distant stars are too small to measure.

Using the HR Diagram, What type of star is our sun? What will eventually happen to our sun? How hot is our sun? What are the hottest types of stars? What are the coldest?

yellow dwarf it will explode or cool and shrink 5,778 K blue hyper giants black/brown dwarves