If the Sun is so important to us - why is it considered an average star? Hello Daniel and thank you for the question! The Sun is THE most important thing in the Universe to our daily survival as a species and inhabitant of planet Earth. Everything that has ever lived or ever will live or grow in the history or future of our world got/will get its energy from the irradiance of our nearest star-The Sun. Now about the Sun being classified as an average yellow star... There is a chart called the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. It was established after many years of comparing a stars luminosity (how bright it is compared to the Sun as the standard) with the surface temperature of the star (derived from spectroscopic studies). It was a groundbreaking discovery of modern astronomy when it was shown that almost every observable star fit along a line called the Main Sequence. This is the line from the lower right of the graph (low temperature/low luminosity) to the upper left (high temperature/high luminosity). It was also very interesting that the size of the star increased as you went from the lower left to the upper right. Scientists are still interpreting what the data and relationships defined by this chart mean. The lifetime of a star can be pretty reliably derived from the chart also. Our Sun sits in a group of yellow colored stars around 6000 degrees Kelvin which happens to be about average as far as the other stars on the diagram. So, our Sun is called an average yellow star when compared to other stars in the Universe. It is all about what frame of reference you are using when you have a discussion. The Sun is the ONLY star in our solar system so it is quite unique, but when you compare it to our galaxy, it is quite common. i hope this answers your question and I would love to hear from you or your classmates again any time you have an astronomy question. Stephen W. Ramsden Really Big American Guy.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 23:21:35 +0000
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