Look up at the night and what do you see? Millions of twinkling lights, also known as stars. Stars are one of the most popular astronomical objects and represents the building blocks of galaxies. A star is defined as a vast ball of gas held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to earth is the Sun. Similar to a living organism, stars have a life cycle in which they are born, they develop and grow, and eventually die. Stars begin as a vast cloud interstellar dust (mostly carbon or silicon) and hydrogen gas floating around in space. This gas can be floating for millions of years until the gas and dust distributed by the gravity of a phenomena such as a streaking comet, a shockwave from a nearby supernova, or colliding galaxies.
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When hydrogen is used up, helium begins to fuse to carbon and the larger element such as calcium and magnesium. Once the main hydrogen supply is used up the outer layers of the star begins to collapse inward toward the core. This process generates heat which temporarily counteracts gravity causing the outer layers of the star to expand. The star expands about one hundred times bigger than it was originally. What happens next in the star life cycle depends on the starting mass of the dust cloud. In general, low mass stars blow off their outer material and dissipate and cool after a few thousand years. High mass stars create a large nuclear …show more content…
The abundance of different ions vary with the temperature of the Photosphere. The spectral class of a star is a code summarizing the ionization and temperature of a star. Most stars are classified as using the Morgan- Keenan system. In this system there are seven main types of stars detonated by letters in order of decreasing temperature O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. O and B stars are very bright and M stars are dim. A common way to plot stars on a graph is using Hertzsprung Russell diagram (HR). This method shows how the size, temperature (color), luminosity, spectral class, and absolute magnitude of a stars relate. The HR diagram shows how the temperature of a star correlates with the luminosity, whereby the hotter the star the higher the luminosity of the star. You can also determine the size of each star from the graph, the larger the radius the higher the temperature and
When hydrogen is used up, helium begins to fuse to carbon and the larger element such as calcium and magnesium. Once the main hydrogen supply is used up the outer layers of the star begins to collapse inward toward the core. This process generates heat which temporarily counteracts gravity causing the outer layers of the star to expand. The star expands about one hundred times bigger than it was originally. What happens next in the star life cycle depends on the starting mass of the dust cloud. In general, low mass stars blow off their outer material and dissipate and cool after a few thousand years. High mass stars create a large nuclear …show more content…
The abundance of different ions vary with the temperature of the Photosphere. The spectral class of a star is a code summarizing the ionization and temperature of a star. Most stars are classified as using the Morgan- Keenan system. In this system there are seven main types of stars detonated by letters in order of decreasing temperature O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. O and B stars are very bright and M stars are dim. A common way to plot stars on a graph is using Hertzsprung Russell diagram (HR). This method shows how the size, temperature (color), luminosity, spectral class, and absolute magnitude of a stars relate. The HR diagram shows how the temperature of a star correlates with the luminosity, whereby the hotter the star the higher the luminosity of the star. You can also determine the size of each star from the graph, the larger the radius the higher the temperature and