Stellar Properties

PROPERTIES OF STARS
EARTH SCIENCE

NUCUM, MANUEL U.
BSED-IA S.Y. 2010-1011
Submitted to: MRS. THELMA D.C. ARRIETA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction
• Stars--What Are They Like?
o Distances---Trigonometric Parallax
o Magnitude System
 Apparent Magnitude
 Absolute Magnitude and Luminosity
 Distance Modulus
o Color and Temperature
 Color Index and Temperature
 Wien's Law and Temperature

Stellar Properties: An Introduction
Author: Nick Strobel
Stars are hundreds of thousands of times farther away from us than the planets are from us. The nearest star (other than the Sun) is so far away that the fastest spacecraft the human race has built so far would take almost several tens of thousands of years to get there. Yet we are a curious and ambitious species, and we want to know how those stars are born, live out their lives, and die. How can we learn about objects that are so remote and beyond our physical grasp? This chapter gives you an idea of how we learn about the stars and what we find about the stars. Because the stars in our galaxy are so far away, they appear as just pinpoints of light in even the most powerful of telescopes on the ground or in space. We have to rely on the information encoded in the feeble starlight. Before continuing with this chapter, be sure to review carefully the concepts in the Electromagnetic Radiation (Light) chapter so that you will understand this Stellar Properties chapter.
By the end of the chapter you will see there is an internal consistency of star properties and that these points of light are very different from the other points of light that wander among them (the planets). Once we were able to measure the distances to the stars, we found that they are very luminous compared to the planets. There are like our Sun. We also discovered that there is a depth to our universe---the stars are not all at the same distance from us. And we found that the universe is a lot bigger than we thought before.
The... [continues]

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