Star Properties video lectures

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The public video lectures cover just the astronomy content from the Astronomy Notes textbook. The public lectures do not include the material that is for the astronomy class such as how to use the class Canvas, lecture outlines in the Student Guide, exam review documents, etc. Students in the Bakersfield College astronomy classes should use the astronomy class lecture videos posted in the class Canvas to get that class-specific content.

This video set covers star properties: their distances, brightnesses, luminosities, magnitudes, temperatures, sizes, masses, velocities, and spectral types. It also covers the concept of a representative sample and biased vs. unbiased sampling. The video lectures are grouped together in the Star Properties Public YouTube playlist. Here are the individual videos for star properties:

  1. Video 1: (for webpages #2, #3, and #4) This video is the first part of the star properties lecture. It covers finding the distances to stars using trig parallax and the inverse square law and the magnitude system for star brightness. The Astronomy Notes textbook goes into more mathematical details of the magnitude system and finding distances from the apparent and absolute magnitudes. First of a set about star properties and first lecture for chapter 11 of Astronomy Notes.

  2. Video 2: (for webpages #5, #8, #10, and #11) This video is the second part of the star properties lecture. It covers the luminosity, temperature, and size relationship and then covers the velocities of stars and their masses. The Astronomy Notes textbook goes into more mathematical details for finding individual masses of stars in a binary system. Second of a set about star properties and second lecture for chapter 11 of Astronomy Notes.

  3. Video 3: (for webpages #12, #13, and #14) temperature to make the spectral types, how we determine the temperature of stars very accurately using the presence of certain spectral lines, the OBAFGKM spectral types, and how we can determine what spectral type most stars are like, so it includes a discussion of representative samples. The Astronomy Notes textbook goes into more quantum physics details about how temperature effects the strength of the absorption lines. Third of a set about star properties and third lecture for chapter 11 of Astronomy Notes.

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last updated: June 24, 2022

Is this page a copy of Strobel's Astronomy Notes?

Author of original content: Nick Strobel