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0245_hses09_GRSWB_Ch25.QXD 7/26/07 3:40 PM Page 245 Name ___________________________ Class ___________________ Date _____________ Chapter 25 Beyond Our Solar System Summary 25.1 Properties of Stars Color is a clue to a star’s temperature. Binary stars are used to determine the star property most difficult to calculate—its mass. • The word constellation is used to designate an area of the sky that contains a specific pattern of stars. • Two stars that orbit each other, pulled toward each other by gravity, are called binary stars. © Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. The nearest stars have the largest parallax angles, while those of distant stars are too small to measure. • Parallax is the slight shifting in the apparent position of a nearby star due to the orbital motion of Earth. Parallax is the most basic way to measure star distance. • The light-year is the distance light travels in one year—about 9.5 trillion kilometers. Three factors control the apparent brightness of a star as seen from Earth: how big it is, how hot it is, and how far away it is. • A star’s brightness as it appears form Earth is called its apparent magnitude. • Astronomers are also interested in how bright a star actually is, or its absolute magnitude. A Hertzsprung-Russell diagram shows the relationship between the absolute magnitude and temperature of stars. • A main sequence star is a star that falls into the main sequence category on the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram. This category contains 90 percent of stars. • Red giants are very bright stars that lie above and to the right of the main sequence in the H-R diagram. • Supergiants are very large, very bright red giants. • Cepheid variables are stars that get brighter and fainter in a regular pattern. • A nova is a sudden brightening of a star. • Nebulae are clouds of dust and gases found in “the vacuum of space.” 25.2 Stellar Evolution • A medium-mass star like the sun goes through several stages of development. It starts as a nebula, which contracts into a protostar—a developing star not yet hot enough for nuclear fusion to occur. Earth Science Guided Reading and Study Workbook ■ 245 IPLS Pages 0245_hses09_GRSWB_Ch25.QXD 7/26/07 3:40 PM Page 246 Name ___________________________ Chapter 25 Class ___________________ Date _____________ Beyond Our Solar System When the core of a protostar has reached about 10 million K, pressure within is so great that nuclear fusion of hydrogen begins, and a star is born. • At some point after fusion begins, a star becomes a balanced, mainsequence star. For an average star, this stage lasts 90 percent of the star’s life. • Once all of the hydrogen in a star’s core is consumed, the star expands and cools, becoming a red giant. All stars, regardless of their size, eventually run out of fuel and collapse due to gravity. • The final stage of a star’s life cycle depends on the star’s mass. Lowmass stars go from being a main-sequence star to becoming a white dwarf. Medium-mass stars become planetary nebulae. Massive stars end in a supernova. • A supernova is a brilliant explosion that causes a star to become millions of times brighter than its prenova stage. • The process that produces chemical elements inside stars is called nucleosynthesis. Earth Science Guided Reading and Study Workbook IPLS Pages ■ 246 © Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. The sun began as a nebula, will spend much of its life as a mainsequence star, and then will become a red giant, planetary nebula, white dwarf, and finally, a black dwarf. • White dwarfs are the remains of low-mass and medium-mass stars. • Neutron stars, which are smaller and more massive than white dwarfs, are thought to be the remnants of supernova events. • A spinning neutron star that appears to give off pulses of radio waves is called a pulsar. • Dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape their surface are called black holes. 0245_hses09_GRSWB_Ch25.QXD 7/26/07 3:40 PM Page 247 Name ___________________________ Chapter 25 Class ___________________ Date _____________ Beyond Our Solar System 25.3 The Universe The Milky Way is a large spiral galaxy whose disk is about 100,000 light-years wide and about 10,000 light-years thick at the nucleus. • Galaxies are large groups of stars, dust, and gases held together by gravity. • There are three types of galaxies. Spiral galaxies are disk shaped with arms extending from the center. Most galaxies are elliptical galaxies, which range in shape from round to oval. A small percent of galaxies have irregular shapes, and are called irregular galaxies. In addition to shape and size, one of the major differences among different types of galaxies is the age of their stars. • A galaxy cluster is a group of galaxies. © Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Pearson Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. The red shifts of distant galaxies indicate that the universe is expanding. • Hubble’s law states that galaxies are retreating from us at a speed that is proportional to their distance. The big bang theory states that at one time, the entire universe was confined to a dense, hot, supermassive ball. Then, about 13.7 billion years ago, a violent explosion occurred, hurling this material in all directions. • According to the big bang theory, the universe began as a violent explosion from which the universe continues to expand, evolve, and cool. Earth Science Guided Reading and Study Workbook ■ 247 IPLS Pages