The Stars: A Survey
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Star Mass and Density
What makes a star shine bright? Much earlier on — probably months ago now — I explained how something called the proton-proton chain generates massive amounts of energy within stars, and enables them to fuel whole solar systems. That’s the battery…
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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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Eclipsing Binary Stars
Imagine a frisbee. At the center of this frisbee lies the sun — our sun, for simplicity’s sake. And sprinkled around the surface of its disk are all nine…excuse me, eight…planets of the solar system, plus the dwarf planets, asteroids, moons,…
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Spectroscopic Binary Stars
Consider a solar system far different from our own. A solar system governed by two suns, and consisting of planets we can only dream of. Would it surprise you to hear that, based on recent discoveries, that might actually be…
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Visual Binary Stars
Here’s a visual binary that just about stretches the limits of the definition. It’s a star, though you’ll never see it like this with the naked eye. Specifically, this is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. But if you…
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Binary Stars
We know how big stars are; they range from the size of the Earth to over a thousand times the size of the sun (which is in itself over one hundred times the size of the Earth). We know they’re…
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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…
