AS102 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Mnemonic, Binary Star
Document Summary
In this section we continue with our classification study and finally get to the heart of the matter by seeing how astronomers classify stars by a combination of temperature and colour. Finally we see how stellar masses fit into the picture and study something about binary star systems. We can use spectroscopy to identify more accurately the temperature of a star. By studying the emission and absorption lines in a star"s spectrum astronomers are able to distinguish differences in temperatures of, say, red stars or blue stars. The hottest stars (blue in colour) are called spectral type. O, the next hottest are designated b, followed by a, f, g, Within each spectral type there are even finer divisions using numbers 0, 1, 2, 9, going from hotter to cooler, respectively. Thus, within the g spectral type we have g6 stars and g7 stars which are cooler than g6.
