01:750:109 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8.2: Solar Mass, Usable Fuel
Document Summary
While stars come in a variety of luminosities, surface temps, and masses, there are also patterns: Most of the brightest stars are reddish in color. Stars that follow these trends all have an important property in common: like the sun, these stars are generating energy by fusing hydrogen in their cores. Main sequence is the group of stars that follow a clear trend in which luminosity depends on surface temp and surface temp is specified by a spectral type. We can infer that luminosity of a main-sequence star simple by determining its spectral type. Observations of binary systems containing stars belonging to the main sequence have shown that their luminosities and surface temperatures are closely related to their masses. Stars of spectral type g, like our sun, have masses near 1 ms un , luminosities near 1 ls un, and surface temps close to the sun"s 5800 k, placing them approx in the middle of the range of each property.
