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Stars

- Stars generate their own light through nuclear fusion, while planets simply reflect sunlight. The distances to stars are very large, with the closest star Proxima Centauri over 25 trillion miles away. - There are two main ways to measure the distance to stars - stellar parallax and comparing an unknown star to one of known distance. Parallax works for stars within about 978 light years, while comparing stars is needed for the vast majority that are more distant. - Analyzing the light of stars allows them to be classified, and then an unknown star can be compared to a known nearby star of the same type to determine its distance.

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John Carlo Roman
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27 views2 pages

Stars

- Stars generate their own light through nuclear fusion, while planets simply reflect sunlight. The distances to stars are very large, with the closest star Proxima Centauri over 25 trillion miles away. - There are two main ways to measure the distance to stars - stellar parallax and comparing an unknown star to one of known distance. Parallax works for stars within about 978 light years, while comparing stars is needed for the vast majority that are more distant. - Analyzing the light of stars allows them to be classified, and then an unknown star can be compared to a known nearby star of the same type to determine its distance.

Uploaded by

John Carlo Roman
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Stars

Stars
When we look at the clear, moonless night sky, we can see thousands of small dots of light, almost all of which are stars. The few bright objects that are not stars are the planets of the solar system. There are, however, easily observable differences between the planets and true stars: all stars twinkle, whereas the planets do not (unless the air in the earths atmosphere is extremely turbulent). And, by looking at the sky on successive nights, the planets seen to have moved by relatively large amount when compared with the apparently stationary background of stars. In addition, most of the planets are close enough to earth to appear as disks (or sometimes crescents, depending on their phase) when view even with low-powered binoculars. A more fundamental difference is that stars, unlike the planets, generate their own energy (emitted in the form of light and other radiation) by nuclear fusion. Planets are visible only because they reflect sunlight. The sun is our nearest star, situated at an average distance from the earth of about 92,960,000 miles (149,600,000 kilometers) or one astronomical unit. The next star is Proxima Centauri, slightly more than 25,000,000,000,000 miles (40,000,000,000,000 kilometers). Despite the immense distances to the stars, and the fact that we cannot see the surface of any star except the sun, we can nevertheless determine some of their individual characteristics. These would be temperature, size, chemical composition, brightness (luminosity), and their groupings. Some stars, such as the sun, are solitary, whereas others may be part of multiple star systems, associations, or stellar clusters.

Distances to the stars


It is very difficult to measure accurately the distances to stars. This is partly because of the apparent smallness of the stars when observed from Earth. Moreover, the observed brightness of a star is not in itself a reliable indicator of distance. Stars that appear to be equally bright seem to be equally distant. Thus, an extremely remote, but intrinsically very bright star may seem to be the same distance from Earth as a much closer, but fainter star. Despite these difficulties, stellar distances can be measured. There are two main ways of doing this. One is by using the stellar parallax effect, the other by comparing the unknown star with a nearer one whose distance is known. The stellar parallax method relies on the effect whereby a relatively near object appears to move in relation to a distant background as the observer moves. In astronomy, the relatively close object is a nearby star (whose distance is to be found), which observed in relation to a distance background of more distant stars. The observer uses the movement of the earth in its orbit as known, sufficiently large change in position. When the earth is at one side of its orbit, the angle to the nearby star is measured. This measurement is repeated six months later, when the earth is on the other side of its orbit. This distance to the nearby star can be calculated by simple trigonometry. But the angular changes for even nearby stars are minute. Proxima Centauri, for example, has a parallax angle of only 0.75 of a second of arc, equivalent to the angle subtended by a small coin at a distance of about 2,000 yards (1,800 meters). This parallax method is practicable only for those stars

The Stars
that are less than about 300 parsecs (978 light-years) away. For this reason, distances to more remote starsby far the majorityare determined using the comparative method. Analysis of light from stars enables them to be classified into several different types. The unknown star is first classified and is then compared with a nearby star of the same type. This second stars intrinsic brightness and distance has previously been determined by means of stellar parallax

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