Glossary - Page 1 of 15

Space Science Glossary

Glossary Topics

  • Binary & Multiple Stars
  • “Lifecycle” of a Star
  • Star Clusters
  • Globular Clusters
  • Open Clusters
  • Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
  • Zodiac, Ecliptic, Celestial Equator
  • Solstice and Equinox
  • Precession
  • Mapping the Sky
  • Magnitude System and Star Brightness
  • Naming Objects
  • Galaxies
  • Active Galactic Nuclei, Seyfert Galaxies, and Quasars
  • The Milky Way
  • Gaseous Nebulae
  • Interstellar Space
  • Scales, Sizes, and Units of Measurement
  • Meteor Showers and Meteor Storms
  • Our solar System

Glossary - Page 1 of 15

Binary & Multiple Stars

A double star is two stars that appear close to one another in the sky. Of these:

  • Some are TRUE BINARIES, meaning that the two stars actually orbit around one another.
  • Some are OPTICAL DOUBLES, meaning that they just appear together when viewed from the Earth because they lie along the same line of sight.

Related Terms:

  • Wide Double – two stars that can easily be resolved (seen as separate stars)
  • Visual Double/Binary – two stars that can be resolved with the naked eye or a telescope.
  • Spectroscopic Double/Binary – two stars that can only be recognized as separate stars when looking at their spectra for Doppler shifting from their orbital motions.
  • Eclipsing Binary – a pair of stars whose plane of orbit is such that, when viewed from Earth, the stars pass in front of and behind one another at certain times. This means that the total light from the pair fluctuates.
  • Multiple Star System – this is a system containing more that two stars. It may consist of two pairs orbiting one another, a pair orbiting a single star, or some other combination.
  • Astrometric Binary – a pair of objects – the invisible companion is detected by the “wobble” of the visible companion.

Sources:

  • J. Pasacjpff and D. Menzel. 1992. Peterson Field Guides – Stars and Planets. New York, NY. Houghton Mifflin Co.. (p 190)

“Lifecycle” of a Star

The lifecycle of a star depends mostly on the initial mass of the star, though chemical makeup and interactions with companion stars can also have a profound effect. (Most stars are born in double and multiple star systems.) The following is a basic outline:

1. Stars are formed within molecular clouds, mostly made of hydrogen (~70% by mass), helium (~28%), and other elements and dust particles.

2. In denser parts of molecular clouds, gravity causes gas and dust to collapse into small, dense objects called cloud cores. These cores collapse until the center starts to heat up, forming a protostar. Magnetic fields erupt from the forming protostar and interact with the disk. Some of the disk's spin energy converts into a pair of oppositely-directed jets of gas and plasma. The luminous shockwaves of these jets, and of the surrounding gases, act as signposts of starbirth. Dust and ice in the disk collide to form larger and larger particles, eventually leading to the formation of protoplanets. Violent collisions mark the very last stages of planet formation, which does not end until only about a dozen Moon- to Jupiter-sized objects form in well separated orbits to avoid further merging.

3. At first, the protostar shines from the heat generated by contraction. As gases at the center of the protostar heat up, thermonuclear fusion starts as hydrogen is “burned” to make helium. When this fusion stabilizes, it is said to have reached the main sequence (see Hertzprung-Russell diagram). Massive stars reach this stage more quickly; low mass stars take much longer.

4. The star spends most of its life in the main sequence stage. The gravitational forces that try to collapse the star are almost balanced by the outward pressure of radiation and hot gasses that are heated by the thermonuclear fusion. Massive stars consume their fuel of hydrogen much faster, living luminous but short lives.

Any star more massive than about 100 Suns will blaze with such a furious light that the outward pressure of radiation will exceed the inward pull of gravity and the star will break up. Very small stars (about one-tenth the mass of the Sun) can live hundreds of billions of years since they burn their fuel very slowly. Note that this is far longer than the current 14 billion-year age of the Universe! Stars less massive than 0.08 times the mass of the Sun fail to ignite the fusion of hydrogen, and will just fade and cool to become brown dwarfs.

5. Stars start to die when the hydrogen in their cores is completely consumed, at which point the core shrinks and heats up. This heating allows helium to "burn" to form carbon, generating energy up to ten thousand times faster. The extra energy causes the star's outer layers expand outward, where they then cool; the star becomes a red giant.

6. The ultimate fate of a star depends on its initial mass.

The most massive stars (60 times the mass of the Sun or more) shed much of their mass during the main sequence phase as powerful stellar winds, including all of their hydrogen. In the cores of such massive stars most of the matter is converted into heavier elements. Near the end of a massive star's life, it swells, first forming a blue supergiant, then a red supergiant, even oscillating between the two as processes cause the star to heat and cool, expand and contract. The very most massive stars are so luminous they blow off their outer layers. The remaining star, called a Wolf-Rayet star, is recognizable by its strange spectrum.

Once the material at the core is burned to iron, the star faces the ultimate energy crisis since iron cannot be fused to gain energy. In a flash, the iron core collapses and the star releases more energy than the star produced during its entire lifetime! This is a supernova explosion that expels material at 10% of the speed of light and leaves behind a black hole.

Stars with initial masses between eight and 50 times that of the Sun do NOT evolve to the Wolf-Rayet stage: they never completely lose the hydrogen in their outer layers. Such stars also become blue and red supergiants. As they build up an iron core, they too explode as supernovae. The remaining core then begins to collapse. If the core is larger than five solar masses, collapse continues until it becomes a black hole. If the core is less than five solar masses, the collapse is stopped when electrons and protons are squeezed together by the extreme pressure to form an ocean of neutrons. These Neutron stars have giant magnetic fields that produce powerful beams of electrons. If, like a lighthouse light, the neutron star's spin sweeps the beams past Earth, we see pulses of radio energy—a pulsar.

Stars approximately the size of the Sun stop fusing elements after they form a core of helium or carbon. Their cores collapse until they are about the size of Earth and electrons can’t be squeezed any closer, resulting in a white dwarf star. As the white dwarf forms, it gently expels the outer layers of the progenitor red giant star out into space, which it then lights up with UV radiation from the hot white dwarf core. This whole object is called a planetary nebula.

Sometimes a supernova can occur when a white dwarf accretes matter from a companion star that is evolving to its red giant phase. When the mass of the white dwarf reaches 1.4 Solar masses, the electrons can't support the star against the inward pull of gravity, and it collapses. But since most white dwarfs contain lots of helium and carbon, the collapse triggers rapid nuclear burning, and within seconds blows up the star. This type of supernova (Type Ia) does not leave behind a collapsed remnant.

Hertzprung-Russell (HR) Diagram

This is a plot of increasing luminosity against decreasing surface temperature. A random survey of stars plotted on an HR diagram gives a consistent pattern. The long thin diagonal of stars is called the MAIN SEQUENCE, and this is where stars spend most of their lives (see 4. above). Above and to the right of that are red giants and supergiants; below and to the left are white dwarfs. Other types are spread around the diagram.

Sources:

  • (click on the relevant file)

Star Clusters

Star clusters are groups of stars that are gravitationally bound together. There are two kinds of star clusters:

  • Open Clusters (or Galactic Clusters)

These are groups of tens to thousands of stars that were formed from the same molecular cloud, and so are similar in age, chemical makeup, and location. They are thought to have formed from clouds of gas and dust in the Milky Way, and are distributed in the plane of the galaxy. Some open clusters are still surrounded by the gases from which they were formed, and are areas of new star formation.

Globular Clusters

These are groups of around ten thousand to one million stars. They are very old, around 12 to 20 billion years, and are thought to have formed in an earlier generation of stars, called Population II stars. (Our Sun and the stars we see in open clusters are Population I stars, born of the material that was left over from the galaxy’s formation after Population II stars had already been born). These globular clusters are distributed in a spherical “halo” of the Milky Way.

Sources:

  • (click on the photo near Globular or Open)
  • Ridpath, Ian. 1998. Norton’s Star Atlas and Reference Handbook. Harlow, Essex, England. Addison Wesley Longman Ltd. (pp 154-155)

Extra-Solar Planetary Systems

Exoplanets are planets that go around stars other than our own. Over 100 exoplanets have been found to date, mostly in singles, though some are in pairs or even triples around a given star.

  • The planets are not observed directly – they are too small and too dim. Rather, scientists observe the star wobbling to and fro from gravity. Much the same way binary stars pull each other in orbit around each other, a planet pulls on its parent star just a little bit. We use this information to determine the size of the orbit and the mass of the planet. In a few rare cases we can determine the planet’s size by measuring the reduction in the amount of light received from the star when the planet passes in front of the star.
  • It is entirely possible that there are smaller planets orbiting stars, but present techniques do not allow us to detect anything smaller than 0.1 the mass of Jupiter.
  • The study of extra-solar planets is a very active field of research and the numbers change every month.

Sources:

Zodiac, Ecliptic, Celestial Equator

The ECLIPTIC is the path across the sky along which the Sun, Moon, and planets appear to travel; it is the plane of the solar system. The CELESTIAL EQUATOR is the circle that would be made if you took the Earth’s equatorial plane and extended it out into space. The Ecliptic and the Celestial Equator are at 23.5 degrees to one another. The ZODIAC constellations are those that lie along the Ecliptic. The NORTH CELESTIAL POLE is the place in the sky where the North Pole would point if it extended out into space.

Glossary - Page 1 of 15

  • Solstice and Equinox

The hemisphere facing the Sun experiences summer; the hemisphere facing away from the Sun experiences winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, the SUMMER SOLSTICE is when the North Celestial Pole of the Earth is tilted directly toward the Sun, and the WINTER SOLSTICE is when the North Celestial Pole is tilted directly away from the sun. At the solstices, the Sun appears farthest from the Celestial Equator. VERNAL EQUINOX and AUTUMNAL EQUINOX happen when the Sun is at the points where the Celestial Equator meets the Ecliptic. We say that the solstices and equinoxes are the first days of each season.

Sources:

Precession

Earth undergoes many motions. It spins around its axis causing day and night. It orbits the Sun each year. It also PRECESSES, meaning that it “wobbles” like a top. The Earth’s axis is tilted at 23.5 degrees to the vertical as it orbits around the Sun, and so the circle described on the sky every 26,000 years by the North Celestial pole is (2 x 23.5) 47 degrees wide in the sky. At the moment, the North Celestial pole points to Polaris.

  • Why the Sun is no longer in a person’s sign/constellation on his or her birthday

Forms of astrology have been around in many cultures for thousands of years. However, the classical Greek signs and the accompanying zodiac (from the Greek work “animal”) were published around the time of Hipparchus (circa 150 ACE) to that of Ptolemy (circa 150 ACE). At that time, the Earth was at a different point in its precession. The Sun was in Aries on the Spring Equinox (Northern Hemisphere), and this point was called the FIRST POINT OF ARIES. Now, because of precession, that point happens when the Sun is actually in Pisces, one sign to the East. This means that all of the signs are shifted by one. This First Point of Aries continues to shift by 1 degree every 72 years.

Sources:

Mapping the Sky

Several methods are used to measure the positions of stars and other celestial objects.

  1. Right Ascension and Declination

This coordinate system is used to uniquely identify the positions of astronomical objects when viewed from anywhere on Earth.

  • Right Ascension - measures the east-west location of the object, starting at the Celestial Meridian (an imaginary line connecting the Celestial Poles and passing through the First Point of Aries) and measured in hours, minutes, and seconds west of that line. It is somewhat analogous to the Prime Meridian line that passes from North to South Pole through Greenwich, England, and defines the zero-line of time.
  • Declination – measures the North-South location of the object, starting at the equator and measured in degrees North (+ve) or South (-ve). It is analogous to the lines of latitude on a globe.

Sources:

2.Altitude/Azimuth

This coordinate system is used to identify the position of an astronomical object as measured from the viewer’s location.

  • Altitude – measures the vertical position of the object in degrees above (+ve) or below (-ve) the observer’s horizon.
  • Azimuth – measures the horizontal position of the object in degrees, starting at north and moving eastward.

Sources:

3.Constellations and star names

The 88 traditional Greco-Roman constellations are used to divide the celestial sphere into sections. Within each constellation, stars have been assigned a Greek letter beginning with the brightest star. Many of the brightest stars have also been given a common name. For example, the brightest star in Cygnus (The Swan) is Deneb, which means “tail” in Arabic; it is also called Alpha Cygni, or  Cyg.

Sources:

  • – fun article about how you CAN’T buy a star!

Mapping Sources:

Magnitude System and Star Brightness

The brightness of a celestial object is measured using the magnitude system. The brighter the star, the lower its magnitude. It is also a logarithmic scale, such that a star of magnitude 3 is about 2.5 times brighter than a star of magnitude 4, and a star of magnitude –1 is about 2.5 times brighter than a star of magnitude 0.

This system may seem to be awkward and lack sense, but in fact it is based on the natural capabilities of the human eye. Hipparchus was the first to catalogue star brightness this way in 120 BCE, assigning a number from 1 to 6 where 1 represented the brightest stars. Astronomers are now able to precisely measure a star’s brightness, and so are not limited to whole numbers.

Related terms:

  • Apparent Magnitude – this is the actual magnitude of the star as we measure it from Earth.
  • Absolute Magnitude – this is the magnitude that the star would be if it were at a distance of 10 parsecs (about 33 light years).
  • Visual Magnitude – this is the magnitude of light that is received from the object in the visual spectrum, about 550 nanometers.

Sources:

Naming Objects

While many cultures throughout time have given names to the stars, planets, and celestial objects, the scientific community has given them “official” names so that they can be uniquely identified. The organization charged with this task is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). There are several naming methods. Some of the main methods are explained below: