Lecture 25 – General Properties of Stars, Part 2/3
Summary / Checklist of the Main Concepts to Understand and Remember

Temperature of Stars  
red bullet How can we find out how hot a star is?  
red bullet 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?  
red bullet What is the HR diagram?  
red bullet What is the main sequence?  
red bullet 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.

left arrow previous next right arrow