Stars Vocabulary

2. small, extremely dense remnant of a star whose gravity is so immense that not even light can escape its gravitational field
6. brightness an object would have if it were placed at a distance of 10 pc; classification system for stellar brightness that can be calculated when the actual distance to a star is known.
7. large cloud of interstellar gas and dust that collapses on itself, due to its own gravity, and forms a hot, condensed object that will become a new star.
8. massive explosion that occurs when the outer layers of a star are blown off.
10. energy output from the surface of a star per second; measured in watts.
12. classification system based on how bright a star appears to be; does not take distance into account so cannot indicate how bright a star actually is.
13. a group of stars that form a pattern in the stars
14. a spinning neutron star that exhibits a pulsing pattern.

1. collapsed, dense core of a star that forms quickly while its outer lakers are falling inwards, has a radius of about 10 km, a mass 1.4 to 3 times that of the Sun, and contains mostly neutrons.
3. graph that relates stellar characteristics-class, mass, temperature, magnitude, diameter and luminosity.
4. hot, condensed object at the center of a nebula that will become a new star when nuclear fusion reactions begin.
5. in an H-R diagram, the broad, diagonal band that includes about 90 percent of all starts and runs from hot, luminous stars in the upper-left corner to cool, dim stars in the lower right corner.
9. apparent positional shift of an object caused by the motion of the observer
11. stars one or two stars that are bound together by gravity and orbit a common center of mass.