Lecture 25 – General Properties of Stars, Part 2/3
Summary / Checklist of the Main Concepts to Understand and Remember
Temperature of Stars | ||
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How can we find out how hot a star is? | |
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What range of temperature values does one find? (Does this refer to the surface or the core of stars?) | |
• | What is the spectral type of a star, and how are spectral types labelled? (the letters O, B, A, ...) | |
• | What are the Sun's spectral type and temperature? | |
Classification of Stars | ||
• | What are the two most important characteristics of a star, if one wants to understand what kind of star it is and the stage it is at in its life? | |
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What is the HR diagram? | |
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What is the main sequence? | |
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What kinds of stars are on, above, or below the main sequence on the HR diagram? | |
• | How can the HR diagram be used to find distances to stars that are too far for parallax to work? | |
• | For what distances does this method (main-sequence fitting, or spectral parallax) work? | |
Topics from the lecture page and textbook not listed above [or between square brackets]
were not covered in class;
Underlined words indicate that I will expect students to remember a number or a name related to that topic.
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