Sections Review

Chapter index in this window —   — Chapter index in separate window

Vocabulary

Review Questions

1. How it is known that luminosity and temperature are correlated for about 90% of the stars?
2. Where are luminous and faint stars plotted in the H-R diagram (color-magnitude diagram)? Where are cool and hot stars plotted?
3. Where are red giants, main sequence stars, and white dwarfs plotted in the H-R diagram?
4. Which main sequence stars are hotter and which are cooler? Which ones are more massive and which ones are the lightweights?
5. Which main sequence stars are bigger in diameter than others? How can we tell that they are bigger?
6. What is the relation between stellar luminosity and stellar mass?
7. Which spectral classes are more common than others? How do you know without having to survey the entire galaxy?
8. Of the two ways of selecting stars, grouping by proximity or by apparent brightness, which gives you a representative sample of stars? Why is the other way a biased way of selecting stars?
9. If you wanted to find an accurate proportion of the galaxies that are faint and the proportion of the galaxies that are luminous, should you select all galaxies within a certain volume of space of all galaxies above a certain apparent brightness? Explain why!
10. Which telescope should you use if you want to get a more accurate proportion of faint stars to luminous stars: a 15-centimeter objective telescope or 90-centimeter objective telescope? Explain why!

Go back to previous section

Go to Astronomy Notes home

last updated: 24 May 2001