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19.6: Key Terms

  • Page ID
    66641
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    cepheid
    a star that belongs to a class of yellow supergiant pulsating stars; these stars vary periodically in brightness, and the relationship between their periods and luminosities is useful in deriving distances to them
    light curve
    a graph that displays the time variation of the light from a variable or eclipsing binary star or, more generally, from any other object whose radiation output changes with time
    luminosity class
    a classification of a star according to its luminosity within a given spectral class; our Sun, a G2V star, has luminosity class V, for example
    parallax
    an apparent displacement of a nearby star that results from the motion of Earth around the Sun
    parsec
    a unit of distance in astronomy, equal to 3.26 light-years; at a distance of 1 parsec, a star has a parallax of 1 arcsecond
    period-luminosity relation
    an empirical relation between the periods and luminosities of certain variable stars
    pulsating variable star
    a variable star that pulsates in size and luminosity
    RR Lyrae
    one of a class of giant pulsating stars with periods shorter than 1 day, useful for finding distances

    This page titled 19.6: Key Terms is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by OpenStax.

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