Republic of the Philippines

PANGASINAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Lingayen Campus
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
Teacher Education Specialization Courses
1st
Semester, A.Y. 2020-2021

A Written Report in Astronomy 

 
 
 
 
 

ANALYZING STARLIGHT
&
STELLAR CENSUS
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
Prepared by: 
 
JENNY A. CATACUTAN
MARY JOY A. MALICDEM
Reporters 
 
 
Submitted to: 
 
FRIENZKY B. MACAYANA 
Instructor 
 ANALYZING STARLIGHT

I. INTRODUCTION

Everything we know about stars—how they are born, what they are made of, how far
away they are, how long they live, and how they will die—we learn by decoding the messages
contained in the light and radiation that reaches Earth. What questions should we ask, and how
do we find the answers?

We can begin our voyage to the stars by looking at the night sky. It is obvious that stars
do not all appear equally bright, nor are they all the same color. To understand the stars, we must
first determine their basic properties, such as what their temperatures are, how much material
they contain (their masses), and how much energy they produce. Since our Sun is a star, of
course the same techniques, including spectroscopy, used to study the Sun can be used to find
out what stars are like. As we learn more about the stars, we will use these characteristics to
begin assembling clues to the main problems we are interested in solving: How do stars’ form?
How long do they survive? What is their ultimate fate?

Figure 1: Star Colors. This long time exposure shows the colors of the stars. The circular motion
of the stars across the image is provided by Earth’s rotation. The various colors of the stars are
caused by their different temperatures. (credit: modification of work by ESO/[Link])
II. DISCUSSION
Even though stars are far away, we can study them through the light they produce. The
process of analyzing starlight is called spectroscopy. The light given off from a star can be
broken down into individual colors called a spectrum.

HOW A SPECTROSCOPE WORKS?

 A spectroscope is a
device that breaks
up the light from a
single object into its
component colors,
allowing scientists
to analyze the light
and discover
properties of the
object emitting it.
 In a spectrum,
patterns of bright or
dark areas, or lines,
indicate the emission of absorption of light by particular atoms and molecules present in
stars and nebulae. By studying the patterns, widths, strengths and positions of these lines
we can also determine:
 State (is the element present in the form of molecules, atoms, or ions)
 Temperature
 Quantity
 Speed (toward or away from us)
 Distance (if in a distant galaxy)

STEREOSCOPIC VIEWING
  To determine distance to an object, we view it from 2 different
places:
 see how it moves with respect to far background
 this is how our eyes work
 In astronomy, we view stars from different parts of the Sun’s orbit.
 close stars will move a lot, far stars will move a little

MEASURING DISTANCE
 Distance is among the most difficult of all astronomical measurements.
 By measuring the angle by which the
star “moves”, we can determine the
distance.
 To measure the distance of a star,
astronomers use a baseline of 1
astronomical unit (AU), which is the
average distance between Earth and the
sun, about 93 million miles (150 million
kilometers). They also measure small
angles in arcseconds, which are tiny
fractions of a degree on the night sky.
★ The closer a star, the more it appears to shift across the sky during the year.
★ The further away a star, the less it appears to shift across the sky.
★ Example: If a star is twice as far away, parallax shift is twice as small.

 It turns
out that the angle the star moves in inversely proportional to its distance from us.
How can we find the distance to a star that is many light years away?

 Stars positions in the sky appear to shift through the year.

 This is because our perspective changes as we orbit the sun.

MEASURING LUMINOSITY

 We measure a star’s brightness by how much light we see.

 We have just measured its distance. Therefore, we can measure luminosity;

brightness = luminosity/4r2 (r = distance to star) luminosity = brightness x 4r2

 We have measured the luminosity of many nearby stars.

★ Our Sun is more luminous than most
★ Least luminous is 0.0001 times our Sun
★ Most luminous is 106 times our Sun

LUMINOSITY

 Perhaps the most important characteristic of a star is its luminosity — the total amount of
energy at all wavelengths that it emits per second. To make the comparison among stars
easy, astronomers express the luminosity of other stars in terms of the Sun’s luminosity.
For example, the luminosity of Sirius is about 25 times that of the Sun. We use the
symbol LSun to denote the Sun’s luminosity; hence, that of Sirius can be written as 25
LSun.

 If all stars were the same luminosity—if they were like standard bulbs with the same light
output—we could use the difference in their apparent brightness to tell us something we
very much want to know: how far away they are. Imagine you are in a big concert hall or
ballroom that is dark except for a few dozen 25-watt bulbs placed in fixtures around the
walls. Since they are all 25-watt bulbs, their luminosity (energy output) is the same. But
from where you are standing in one corner, they do not have the same apparent
brightness. Those close to you appear brighter (more of their light reaches your eye),
 whereas those far away appear dimmer (their light has spread out more before reaching
you). In this way, you can tell which bulbs are closest to you. In the same way, if all the
stars had the same luminosity, we could immediately infer that the brightest-appearing
stars were close by and the dimmest-appearing ones were far away.

 Unfortunately, the stars do not all have the same luminosity. But this means that if a star
looks dim in the sky, we cannot tell whether it appears dim because it has a low
luminosity but is relatively nearby, or because it has a high luminosity but is very far
away. To measure the luminosities of stars, we must first compensate for the dimming
effects of distance on light, and to do that, we must know how far away they are.

 A star can appear bright for a number of reasons:

★ It is burning hotter
★ It is closer to your eyes
★ It is larger.

APPARENT MAGNITUDE AND ABSOLUTE MAGNITUDE

Apparent Magnitude

 How bright the star looks from Earth?

 A small, cool burning star will look bright if it is close to Earth

 A hot burning star may look dim if its far away.

 If two stars are the same distance away, what may cause one to look brighter than the
other one?
★ The brighter star may
be bigger or hotter.

Absolute Magnitude (It’s Luminosity)

  The actual brightness of a star, assuming all stars were set at a standard distance from
Earth. (true brightness)
 The measurement of light intensity given off.
 Refers to the amount of energy being emitted from a light source.
 Like measuring the wattage of a light bulb.
 The smaller the star magnitude, the brighter it is.
 Example: (M -4.3) is brighter than (M7)
 A star’s absolute magnitude depends on how much light power it has and nothing to do
with distance from Earth.

The Magnitude Scale

 The process of measuring the apparent brightness of stars is called photometry (from the
Greek photo meaning “light” and –metry meaning “to measure”). Astronomical
photometry began with Hipparchus. Around 150 B.C.E., he erected an observatory on
the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean. There he prepared a catalog of nearly 1000
stars that included not only their positions but also estimates of their apparent
brightnesses.

 Hipparchus did not have a telescope or any instrument that could measure apparent
brightness accurately, so he simply made estimates with his eyes. He sorted the stars into
six brightness categories, each of which he called a magnitude. He referred to the
brightest stars in his catalog as first-magnitudes stars, whereas those so faint he could
barely see them were sixth-magnitude stars. Measurements showed that we receive about
100 times more light from a first-magnitude star than from a sixth-magnitude star. Based
on this measurement, astronomers then defined an accurate magnitude system in which a
difference of five magnitudes corresponds exactly to a brightness ratio of 100:1. In
addition, the magnitudes of stars are decimalized; for example, a star isn’t just a “second-
magnitude star,” it has a magnitude of 2.0 (or 2.1, 2.3, and so forth). This means that a
magnitude 1.0 star and a magnitude 2.0 star differ in brightness by a factor of about 2.5.
  The brightest stars, those that were traditionally referred to as first-magnitude stars,
actually turned out (when measured accurately) not to be identical in brightness. For
example, the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, sends us about 10 times as much light as the
average first-magnitude star. On the modern magnitude scale, Sirius, the star with the
brightest apparent magnitude, has been assigned a magnitude of −1.5. Other objects in the
sky can appear even brighter. Venus at its brightest is of magnitude −4.4, while the Sun
has a magnitude of −26.8.
 The important fact to remember when using magnitude is that the system goes backward:
the larger the magnitude, the fainter the object you are observing.

Figu
re 1: Apparent Magnitudes of Well-Known Objects. The faintest magnitudes that can be detected
by the unaided eye, binoculars, and large telescopes are also shown.

MEASURING TEMPERATURE

 We use the colors of light to determine temperature. Stars are not all the same color
because they do not all have the same temperature. Therefore, we can calculate the stellar
surface temperature using the color of a star.
Wien’s law is the equation that relates color
and temperature; it tells us that blue stars are
hotter and red stars are colder.
★ Blue – hottest (35000⁰C)
★ Yellow – our Sun (5500⁰C)
 ★ Red – coolest (3000⁰C)
 Measure light through a blue filter and a yellow-green filter.
 Ratio of amount of light allows us to measure the temperature.
 like we did for the Sun
 Most stars are cooler than our Sun.
GETTING FAMILIAR TO THE SPECTRAL SEQUENCE
 Spectral type - a way of classifying a star by the lines that appears in its spectrum; it is
related to surface temperature.
 Basic spectral types are designated by letters:
 OBAFGKM with O for the hottest and M for the coolest.
 The Sun is a G class.
 Subdivided with numbers from 0-9.

Spectral classes are as follows:

Oh Be A Fine Girl/Guy, Kiss Me!

COLOR INDICES

 In order to specify the exact color of a star, astronomers normally measure a star’s
apparent brightness through filters, each of which transmits only the light from a
particular narrow band of wavelengths (colors). A crude example of a filter in everyday
life is a green-colored, plastic, soft drink bottle, which, when held in front of your eyes,
lets only the green colors of light through.

 One commonly used set of filters in astronomy measures stellar brightness at three
wavelengths corresponding to ultraviolet, blue, and yellow light. The filters are named:
 U (ultraviolet), B (blue), and V (visual, for yellow). These filters transmit light near the
wavelengths of 360 nanometers (nm), 420 nm, and 540 nm, respectively. The brightness
measured through each filter is usually expressed in magnitudes. The difference between
any two of these magnitudes—say, between the blue and the visual magnitudes (B–V)—
is called a color index.

MEASURING SIZE
 Stars come in a wide variety of sizes. At some periods in their lives, stars can expand to
enormous dimensions. Stars of such exaggerated size are called giants. Luckily for the
astronomer, stellar spectra can be used to distinguish giants from run-of-the-mill stars
(such as our Sun).
 Once we know the luminosity and temperature
of the star, we can measure the size of it.
 Most stars are smaller than the Sun.
 Smallest stars are 0.01 times the size of the
Sun.
 Largest stars at several thousand times the size
of the Sun.

Suppose you want to determine whether a star is a giant. A giant star has a large,
extended photosphere. Because it is so large, a giant star’s atoms are spread over a great volume,
which means that the density of particles in the star’s photosphere is low. As a result, the
pressure in a giant star’s photosphere is also low. This low pressure affects the spectrum in two
ways.

★ First, a star with a lower-pressure photosphere shows narrower spectral lines than a star
of the same temperature with a higher-pressure photosphere. The difference is large
enough that careful study of spectra can tell which of two stars at the same temperature
has a higher pressure (and is thus more compressed) and which has a lower pressure (and
thus must be extended). This effect is due to collisions between particles in the star’s
photosphere—more collisions lead to broader spectral lines. Collisions will, of course, be
 more frequent in a higher-density environment. Think about it like traffic—collisions are
much more likely during rush hour, when the density of cars is high.

★ Second, more atoms are ionized in a giant star than in a star like the Sun with the same
temperature. The ionization of atoms in a star’s outer layers is caused mainly by photons,
and the amount of energy carried by photons is determined by temperature. But how long
atoms stay ionized depends in part on pressure. Compared with what happens in the Sun
(with its relatively dense photosphere), ionized atoms in a giant star’s photosphere are
less likely to pass close enough to electrons to interact and combine with one or more of
them, thereby becoming neutral again. Ionized atoms, as we discussed earlier, have
different spectra from atoms that are neutral.

III. REFERENCES
 [Link]
 [Link]
 [Link]
 [Link]
 [Link]
[Link]?chapter_no=investigation
 [Link]
 STELLAR CENSUS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

 Describe the distribution of stellar masses found close to the Sun;

 Distinguish the different types of binary star systems;
 Identify the parts of an eclipsing binary star light curve that correspond to the diameters
of the individual components; and
 Identify the physical characteristics of stars that are used to create an H–R diagram, and
discuss the physical properties of most stars found at different locations on the H–R
diagram, such as radius, and for main sequence stars, mass.

I. INTRODUCTION

Astronomers use a much larger “measuring stick” called the light-year. A light-year is the
distance that light (the fastest signal we know) travels in 1 year. Since light covers an astounding
300,000 kilometers per second, and since there are a lot of seconds in 1 year, a light-year is a
very large quantity: 9.5 trillion (9.5 × 1012) kilometers to be exact. They measure distances in
light years (LY). Astronomical distances are difficult to measure.

★ Small stars are less luminous and, therefore, harder to see If not corrected for these hard-
to-see stars, our sample of stars will be biased. Careful observation reveals that small
stars (brown dwarfs) are more common than large stars.
★ While less numerous, large stars are easier to see at large distances. Most of the stars
visible to the naked eye are large.
★ Stars that appear very bright are not necessarily very close to us, and those appearing
faint are not necessarily very distant from us. In fact, the brightest stars are bright mainly
because they are intrinsically very luminous. Most of them are very far away. Moreover,
most of the nearest stars are intrinsically very fain. The luminosity (L) of stars ranges
from more than 106 LSun for the most luminous stars to 10-6 LSun for brown dwarfs.

II. DISCUSSION

Measuring Stellar Masses

Mass is one of a star’s most important characteristics Knowing the mass can help us
estimate how long it will shine and what its ultimate fate will be Yet, a star’s mass is very
difficult to measure directly Indirect measurements of stellar masses can be done for binary-star
systems.

 Luckily, not all stars live like the Sun, in isolation from other stars. About half the stars
are binary stars—two stars that orbit each other, bound together by gravity. Masses of
binary stars can be calculated from measurements of their orbits, just as the mass of the
Sun can be derived by
measuring the orbits of
the planets around it.
  Orbits and Masses of Binary Stars. The masses of the two (2) stars can be estimated
using Kepler's third law (the squares of the orbital periods of the planets are directly
proportional to the cubes of the semi major axes of their orbits) . Kepler's Third Law
implies that the period for a planet to orbit the Sun increases rapidly with the radius of its
orbit. The orbital period P (in years) and semi major axis D (in AU) of the ellipse are
related to the masses M1 and M2 (in units of the Sun’s mass) by D3 = (M1+M2) P2.
Thus, if D and P are measured, the sum of the masses can be found. If the relative orbital
speeds of the 2 stars are also measured, the mass of each star separately can be
calculated as well.

Binary Stars

 The first binary star was discovered in 1650, less than half a century after Galileo began
to observe the sky with a telescope. John Baptiste Riccioli (1598–1671), an Italian
astronomer, noted that the star Mizar, in the middle of the Big Dipper’s handle, appeared
through his telescope as two stars. Since that discovery, thousands of binary stars have
been cataloged.

Visual Binaries

 Binary-star systems in which both of the stars can be seen with a telescope are called
visual binaries Animation Binary stars: Sirius A and B
 Sirius A and B. Sirius A is normal star Sirius B is a white dwarf companion. The
orbits are drawn to scale, but the sizes of the stars are exaggerated Sirius A is
considerably larger than the Sun, while Sirius B is about the size of the Earth.
 Spectroscopic
Binaries. In some
binary-star systems,
only one of the stars can
be seen with a
telescope, but the
presence of the
companion star is
revealed by
spectroscopy Such stars are called spectroscopic binaries. The binary nature is
indicated in the periodic Doppler-shift of their spectral lines as they orbit around
each other Doppler-shift.
 Doppler Effect in Binary Stars. If the line spectra of the spectroscopic binaries can
be observed, their motion is reflected in
the Doppler shifts of the spectral lines
Radial velocities of spectroscopic

binaries.
 Range of Stellar Masses. How large and small can stars be? Stars with masses up
to about 100 times that of the Sun have been discovered Some stars may have
masses up to about 200 solar masses. Theoretical calculations suggest that the
mass of a true star must be at least 1/12 that of the Sun. A “true” star is one that
becomes hot enough to fuse protons to form helium. Objects with masses between
1/100 and 1/12 that of the Sun are called brown dwarfs. They may produce
energy for a brief time by nuclear reactions, but do not become hot enough to fuse
protons. They are intermediate in mass between stars and planets. Objects with
masses less than about 1/100 that of the Sun are considered planets.
 Mass-Luminosity Relation. There is a correlation between the mass and
luminosity of a star. The more massive stars are generally also the more luminous
(they give off more
energy). For about
10% of the stars,
this relationship is
violated. They
include the white
dwarfs.

 Diameters of Stars.
The diameter of a star can be determined by measuring the time it takes an object
(the Moon, a planet, or a companion star) to pass in front of it and blocks its light.
The blocking of the star’s light is an eclipse. The brightness of the star decreases
gradually during the eclipse. The time for the brightness decrease depends on size
of star. Accurate sizes for a large number of stars come from measurements of
eclipsing binaries.
 Eclipsing Binary System Some binary stars are lined up in such a way that, when
viewed from the Earth,
each star passes in front of
the other during every
revolution Thus, we can
 observe periodic eclipses in these binary-star systems, which are therefore called
eclipsing binaries.
 H-R Diagram. There is a relationship between the temperature (color) and
luminosity of 90% of
stars. They lie along a
band called the main
sequence. The plot of
stars’ luminosities
versus their
temperatures is called
the Hertzsprung-
Russell diagram (H-R
diagram).

★ H-R Diagram
for Many Stars

★ Features of H-R Diagram. The main-sequence band contains almost 90% of the
stars. Large blue
stars. Medium yellow
stars. Small red stars.
About 10% of the
stars lie below the
main sequence. They
are the hot, but dim,
white dwarfs. No
more than 1% of the
stars lie above the
 main sequence. They are cool and very luminous. They must be giants and super
giants.
★ Characteristics of Main-Sequence Stars. The main sequence turns out to be a
sequence of stellar masses (for almost 90% of the stars). The more massive stars
have the more weight and can thus compress their centers to the greater degree,
which implies that they are the hotter inside and the better at generating energy
from nuclear reactions deep within.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS

Spectral Type Mass (Sun = 1) Luminosity (Sun = 1) Temperature Radius (Sun = 1)

O5 40 7 × 105 40,000 K 18
B0 16 2.7 × 105 28,000 K 7
A0 3.3 55 10,000 K 2.5
F0 1.7 5 7500 K 1.4
G0 1.1 1.4. 6000 K 1.1
K0 0.8 0.35 5000 K 0.8
M0 0.4 0.05 3500 K 0.6
  The other 10% stars. About 10% of the stars do not follow the mass-luminosity
relationship do not lie on the main sequence. Giant and supergiant stars lie on the
upper-right section of the H-R diagram are very luminous because they are large in
diameter, although they are cool

make up less than 1% of the stars. White dwarfs lie on the lower-left section of the
H-R diagram are small in diameter (similar to Earth’s) are hot, but dim make up
about 10% of the stars Betelgeuse.

III. REFERENCES
 [Link]
 [Link]