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The Sun and the Stars The Sun #4-Core #7-Corona #2Chromosphere #8-Solar flares #5-Prominence #3-Sun spot Also #1-Photosphere #6-Solar wind Fill in the blanks • In the CORE hydrogen is fused into helium • A Sunspot is a dark area of the sun that is cooler than the surrounding areas • The photosphere is the lowest layer of the suns atmosphere from which light is given off • Solar wind is made up of charged particles that continually escape from the corona and move through space • The Chromosphere is the largest layer of the sun’s atmosphere • The Corona extends upwards of 10 000 km • A huge arching column of gas is a prominence • Gases near a sunspot that suddenly brighten, shooting gas outward at high speeds, are called solar flares Stars and their Life Cycles • What is the single most distinguishing feature of a star? • Luminosity is a term that astronomers use when describing the total amount of energy it radiated by the star ( the twinkle) • It can be measured more precisely as a star’s total energy output per second, measured in Joules per second (J/s) • When discussion stars we always compare with the sun, some stars are about 10 000 times less luminous than the Sun or up to 30 000 times more luminous. Brightness • Astronomers also use the term absolute magnitude when describing the brightness of the star this term describes how bright the star would appear at a distance of 32.6 light years from Earth, our Suns absolute magnitude is 4.7 and is really rather faint. • While all stars appear as a faint white light from a distance they can be bluish, bluish-white, yellow, orangish, or reddish depending on their surface temperature • Scientists use a powerful telescope to analyze the colour of the star and then its surface temperature. Since the Sun is yellow, we infer that the temperature of yellow stars is about 6000°C, bluish stars have a surface temperature between 21 000° C and 35 000°C, reddish stars have a lower temperature of about 3300°C Star Masses • How did astronomers estimate the masses of stars? Most stars in the solar system exist as binary stars, these starts are composed of 2 distinct stars which orbit each other, the sun is unusual in that it is not a binary star • By knowing the size of the orbit of the binary star and the revolution of the starts, astronomers were able to calculate the mass of each star, it is expressed in solar mass. The Suns solar mass is 1 and other starts range from 0.08 to 100 solar masses. Use the text book and these websites to help you fill out your column of the chart. • http://www.telescope.org/pparc/res8.htm l • http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/rel_st ars.html – Check out the links at the bottom