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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]
The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium; they account for 74.9% and 23.8%, respectively, of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere.All heavier elements, colloquially called metals in stellar astronomy, account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen (roughly 1% of the Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%) being the most abundant.
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.
In forming the stellar structure equations (exploiting the assumed spherical symmetry), one considers the matter density (), temperature (), total pressure (matter plus radiation) (), luminosity (), and energy generation rate per unit mass () in a spherical shell of a thickness at a distance from the center of the star.
In a neutron star the matter is in a state known as neutron-degenerate matter, with a more exotic form of degenerate matter, QCD matter, possibly present in the core. [100] The blown-off outer layers of dying stars include heavy elements, which may be recycled during the formation of new stars.
The various distinctive types of stars are shown by the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (H–R diagram)—a plot of absolute stellar luminosity versus surface temperature. Each star follows an evolutionary track across this diagram.
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.
In astronomy, absolute magnitude (M) is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale; the more luminous (intrinsically bright) an object, the lower its magnitude number.