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A star also radiates neutrinos, which carry off some energy (about 2% in the case of the Sun), contributing to the star's total luminosity. [5] The IAU has defined a nominal solar luminosity of 3.828 × 10 26 W to promote publication of consistent and comparable values in units of the solar luminosity. [6]
Occasionally, letters a and b are applied to luminosity classes other than supergiants; for example, a giant star slightly less luminous than typical may be given a luminosity class of IIIb, while a luminosity class IIIa indicates a star slightly brighter than a typical giant.
As of 2005 the star with the lowest iron content ever measured is the dwarf HE1327-2326, with only 1/200,000th the iron content of the Sun. [134] By contrast, the super-metal-rich star μ Leonis has nearly double the abundance of iron as the Sun, while the planet-bearing star 14 Herculis has nearly triple the iron. [135]
Observed changes in the chemical abundances of different types of stars, based on the spectral peculiarities that were later attributed to metallicity, led astronomer Walter Baade in 1944 to propose the existence of two different populations of stars. [12] These became commonly known as population I (metal-rich) and population II (metal-poor ...
Stellar structure models describe the internal structure of a star in detail and make predictions about the luminosity, the color and the future evolution of the star. Different classes and ages of stars have different internal structures, reflecting their elemental makeup and energy transport mechanisms.
A-type star In the Harvard spectral classification system, a class of main-sequence star having spectra dominated by Balmer absorption lines of hydrogen. Stars of spectral class A are typically blue-white or white in color, measure between 1.4 and 2.1 times the mass of the Sun, and have surface temperatures of 7,600–10,000 kelvin.
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The derivation showed that stars can be approximately modelled as ideal gases, which was a new, somewhat radical idea at the time. What follows is a somewhat more modern approach based on the same principles. An important factor controlling the luminosity of a star (energy emitted per unit time) is the rate of energy dissipation through its bulk.