The Brightest of Stars
The classification of stars is something that astronomers have been doing since they realized that some points of light were brighter than others in the night sky. Today’s classification system takes several factors into account before pigeon-holing a star into a group. The system is not easily understood, so we have assembled a group of links to articles that will attempt to make the system more user friendly for our readers. Instead of leaving you to dive into the links, here are a few interesting facts about the classification of stars.
Stars are classified based on the spectral characteristic of their light. A star’s temperature affects the color of light that it emits. Red is for cold and blue is for hot with varying shades in between.
The colors are denoted by a series of letters: O, B, A, F, G, K and M. You can remember the sequence with the handy mnemonic, “oh be a fine girl and kiss me”. For more detail, astronomers classify stars even further.
The surface temperature of the hottest stars can exceed 41,000 kelvins. In comparison, the surface temperature of our Sun barely exceeds 5,700 kelvins.
The hotter the star, the shorter its life span will be.
A star’s classification will change as it ages. Our Sun is currently a G class star, but will swell and become a red supergiant(M class) in about 5 billion years.
A star’s classification does not have anything to do with its mass or size. Many of them include stars that are dwarfs and range up to supergiants.
There are many more interesting facts to be found in the links below. Hopefully, you are able to find what you are looking for and, as always, enjoy your research.
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