What the stars
It’s a dark, clear, moonless night. You look up into the sky. You see thousands of stars arranged in patterns or constellations. The light from these stars has traveled great distances to reach Earth. But what are stars? How far away are they? Are they all the same? Are there other planets around them?
Stars are massive, glowing balls of hot gases, mostly hydrogen and helium. Some stars are relatively close (the closest 30 stars are within 40 parsecs) and others are far, far away. Astronomers can measure the distance by using a method called parallax, in which the change in a star’s position in the sky is measured at different times during the year. Some stars are alone in the sky, others have companions (binary stars) and some are part of large clusters containing thousands to millions of stars. Not all stars are the same. Stars come in all sizes, brightnesses, temperatures and colors. Let’s take a closer look at the features of stars.
Stars have many features that can be measured by studying the light that they emit:
- temperature
- spectrum or wavelengths of light emitted
- brightness
- luminosity
- size (radius)
- mass
- movement (toward or away from us, rate of spin)
