spectral types
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Interstellar Spectra
I often refer to what we call the interstellar medium as the galaxy’s “backstage,” and I do that for a reason: for the most part, we can’t see it. The backstage of any theater isn’t part of the show. You, as…
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Extinction and Reddening of Starlight
Take a wild guess: What do you think this image is showing you? If you said it looks like a giant black hole in space, I don’t blame you. I also don’t blame you if you thought it looks like…
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The Average Star
What the heck is the average star like? We’ve talked about a lot of stars over the past few weeks. We’ve discovered the vast distances between the stars, looked more closely at what really makes a star bright, and covered all…
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Star Types Demystified
By now, I’ve introduced you to a lot of different ways to classify stars. Months ago, I talked about the different spectral classes — O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. Even before that, I told you about apparent visual…
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How Far Are the Stars?
Stars don’t look small because they’re really the size of pinholes in a blanket. The smallest are the size of Earth. The largest have 128,865,170 times Earth’s diameter. They look small in the sky because they’re distant. It’s for the same…
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Star Luminosity Classes
What do you think it would mean for a star to be in a specific luminosity class? I mean…does that mean they go to school to learn how to be bright? (Ha, ha…yeah, I know, bad astronomy pun.) Well…not quite.…
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Just How Big Are Stars?
Tell me about the stars you see in this image. They look like billions of little pinpricks of light, right? It’s hard to imagine that each one of these is probably the size of the sun…or much larger. And the…
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The H-R Diagram
There are 250 billion stars in our galaxy alone. Many are much like the sun, labeled with the Latin sol for “sun” in this diagram. But many more are not quite what we might expect stars to be like, after living…
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The Starlight We Can’t See
Find yourself a dark, unpolluted night sky on a clear night free of clouds, and you are very likely to look up into the heavens and see a sight quite like this. It’s what we see of the Milky Way,…
