Term | Definition |
light year | The distance light travels in a year. |
10 | If a star is 10 light years away that means it will take ___ years for light to reach us on Earth. |
large | We do not use kilometers or miles for distances in space because they are far too _______. |
light | The best place on earth to put a telescope is a place where there is no ________ pollution or atmosphere. (This is why we put telescopes on mountains, in the desert, or in space) |
protostar | A 'baby' star that has not yet begun nuclear fusion. |
fusion | In the core of a star, atoms of Hydrogen are smashed together to form helium in a process called __________. |
star | A sphere of glowing hot gases that is undergoing nuclear fusion in its core. |
half | Our sun is an average sized star that can be found about _______ of the way from the center of our galaxy. |
spiral | Our Milky Way galaxy is classified as a ________ galaxy. |
temperature | A star's color tells you the relative ____________ of the star. |
brighter | If you increase the size of a star it always gets ___________ or more luminous. |
mass | A star's ______ will always determine the path it will take during it's life cycle. |
apparent magnitude | The amount of light we receive on Earth from objects in space is called ________ ________. |
absolute magnitude | The actual or true brightness of star is called _________ __________. We also refer to this as 'luminosity'. |
temperature and luminosity | The HR Diagram plots the ___________ and _____________ of stars. |
main sequence | Our sun is a ______ __________ or 'living' star on the HR Diagram |
blue giants | Stars plotted on the upper left of the HR Diagram which are HOT and BRIGHT are called ______ ________. |
white dwarfs | Stars plotted on the lower left of the HR Diagram which are HOT and DIM are called ______ ________. |
red giants | Stars plotted on the upper right of the HR Diagram which are relatively COOL and BRIGHT are called ______ ________. |
red dwarfs | Stars plotted on the lower right of the HR Diagram which are COOL and DIM are called ______ ________. |
spiral galaxies | _________ _________ are galaxies that contain large amounts of gas and dust as well as lots of relatively NEW stars. |
elliptical galaxies | __________ ___________ are galaxies that contain very small amounts of gas and dust as well as relatively OLD stars. |
irregular galaxies | _________ _________ are galaxies that have no pattern or easily defined shape but they do contain large amounts of gas and dust. |
nebula | All stars begin and end their lives in this large cloud of gas and dust. |
fusing | A star is considered 'living' when it's core gets hot enough to begin ________ Hydrogen into Helium. |
shorter | Stars with a higher mass will live _______ lives than stars with lower mass because they burn their fuel hotter and faster. |
red giant | When a star runs out of Hydrogen fuel it enters the 'dying' stage, expanding and cooling off to become a _____ _______. |
white dwarf | When a small to average size star begins producing iron in its core, gravity cause the star to collapse, leaving behind a _____ ______ in a planetary nebula. |
black dwarf | When a white dwarf cools off and no longer glows it becomes a ______ _______. |
supernova | Large or super massive stars will explode in a ___________ at the end of their lives. |
neutron | Large mass stars will end up as __________ stars after they explode in a supernova. |
black holes | Super massive stars will end up as ________ _______ after they explode in a supernova. |
light | The gravity from a black hole is so strong that not even ______ can escape. |
Big Bang | The most universally accepted scientific theory on the origins of the universe is called the ____ ______ theory. |
red shift | ____ ______ is the evidence discovered by Edwin Hubble that is used to explain how distant galaxies are moving away from us. |
ALL | We use telescopes that cover _____ of the electromagnetic spectrum to study components of the universe. |
elements | We can tell how old a star is by using a spectrometer to see what type of ___________ it is made of. |
pulsar | A neutron star that emits radio waves and can be identified using a radio telescope is called a _________. |
quasar | A galaxy with a black hole at its center is called a _________. |
OBAFGKM | The modern classification system we use to classify stars is represented by the letters _ _ _ _ _ _ _ (from hottest to coldest). Annie Jump Cannon is responsible for this classification system. |
Blue (O) - Light Blue (B) - White (A) - Light Yellow (F) - Yellow (G) - Orange (K) - Red (M) | Stars are classified by these colors on the HR Diagram from hottest to coldest.... |
G | Our sun is an average star with a luminosity of 1 and a surface temperature of about 5,500 K. It is classified as a ___ class yellow star. |
lowest | M class stars have the ________ surface temperatures out of all stars on the HR diagram. (around 3000 C) |
UV and Infrared | Light that is most similar to the visible light we can see on the EMS is ___ and ________ light.
(the wavelength and frequency are most similar) |
Visible light | When you look through an optical telescope like Galileo did, you are seeing what type of light? |
narrow | Visible light that we can see (ROYGBIV) only makes up a very ________ band of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. |
galaxies | When we look at the Hubble Deep Field image we are seeing distant __________ which are huge collections of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity. |
visible | The Hubble telescope is an optical telescope, meaning it uses mostly _______ light. |
expand | When our sun runs out of Hydrogen fuel, it will begin to ________ and cool off becoming a red giant, eventually consuming the Earth. |