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9.7: Key Terms

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    Celestial Census Key Terms

    • Wien's law: a formula that relates the temperature of a blackbody to the wavelength at which it emits the greatest intensity of radiation
    • color index: the difference between the magnitudes of a star or other object measured in light of two different spectral regions, such as blue minus visual, or B–V, magnitudes
    • binary stars: two stars that revolve about each other
    • visual binary: a binary star in which the two components are telescopically resolved
    • spectroscopic binary: a binary star in which the components are not resolved, but whose binary nature is indicated by periodic variations in radial velocity indicating orbital motion
    • brown dwarf: an object intermediate in size between a planet and a star; the approximate mass range is from about 1/100 of the mass of the Sun up to the lower mass limit for self-sustaining nuclear reactions, which is about 0.075 the mass of the Sun; brown dwarfs are capable of deuterium fusion, but not hydrogen fusion
    • mass-luminosity relation: the observed relation between the masses and luminosities of many stars, about 90% of all stars
    • eclipsing binary: a binary star in which the plane of revolution of the two stars is nearly edge-on to our line of sight, so that the light of one star is periodically diminished by the other passing in front of it
    • H-R diagram: Hertzsprung–Russell diagram; a plot of luminosity against surface temperature, or spectral type, for a group of stars

    9.7: Key Terms is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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