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Aldebaran
Aldebaran () is a star in the zodiac constellation of Taurus. It has the Bayer designation α Tauri, which is Latinized to Alpha Tauri and abbreviated Alpha Tau or α Tau. Aldebaran varies in brightness from an apparent visual magnitude of 0.75 down to 0.95, making it the brightest star in the constellation, as well as (typically) the fourteenth-brightest star in the night sky. It is at a distance of approximately 67 light-years. The star lies along the line of sight to the nearby Hyades cluster. Aldebaran is a red giant, meaning that it is cooler than the Sun with a surface temperature of , but its radius is about 45 times the Sun's, so it is over 400 times as luminous. As a giant star, it has moved off the main sequence on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram after depleting its supply of hydrogen in the core. The star spins slowly and takes 520 days to complete a rotation. Together with the star Alpha Tauri B (Alderbaran B), it makes a star system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taurus (constellation)
Taurus (Latin, 'Bull') is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the northern celestial hemisphere. Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the Northern Hemisphere's winter sky. It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to the Early Bronze Age at least, when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox. Its importance to the agricultural calendar influenced sacred bull, various bull figures in the mythologies of Ancient Sumerian religion, Sumer, Akkadian religion, Akkad, Assyrian religion, Assyria, Babylonian religion, Babylon, Ancient Egyptian religion, Egypt, Ancient Greek religion, Greece, and Religion in ancient Rome, Rome. Its old astronomical symbol is (♉︎), which resembles a bull's head. A number of features exist that are of interest to astronomers. Taurus hosts two of the nearest open clusters to Earth, the Pleiades and the Hyades (star cluster), Hyades, both of which are visible to the naked eye. At first magnitu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyades (star Cluster)
The Hyades (; Greek Ὑάδες, also known as Caldwell 41, Collinder 50, or Melotte 25) is the nearest open cluster and one of the best-studied star clusters. Located about away from the Sun, it consists of a roughly spherical group of hundreds of stars sharing the same age, place of origin, chemical characteristics, and motion through space. From the perspective of observers on Earth, the Hyades Cluster appears in the constellation Taurus, where its brightest stars form a "V" shape along with the still-brighter Aldebaran. However, Aldebaran is unrelated to the Hyades, as it is located much closer to Earth (65 light-years) and merely happens to lie along the same line of sight. The five brightest member stars of the Hyades have consumed the hydrogen fuel at their cores and have evolved into giant stars. Four of these stars, with Bayer designations Gamma, Delta1, Epsilon, and Theta2 Tauri, form an asterism that is traditionally identified as the head of Taurus the Bull. The f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Radius
Solar radius is a unit of distance used to express the size of objects in astronomy relative to the Sun. The solar radius is usually defined as the radius to the layer in the Sun's photosphere where the optical depth equals 2/3: 1\,R_ = 6.957\times 10^8 \hbox is approximately 10 times the average radius of Jupiter, 109 times the radius of the Earth, and 1/215 of an astronomical unit, the approximate distance between Earth and the Sun. The solar radius to either pole and that to the equator differ slightly due to the Sun's rotation, which induces an oblateness in the order of 10 parts per million. Measurements The uncrewed SOHO spacecraft was used to measure the radius of the Sun by timing transits of Mercury across the surface during 2003 and 2006. The result was a measured radius of . Haberreiter, Schmutz & Kosovichev (2008) determined the radius corresponding to the solar photosphere to be . This new value is consistent with helioseismic estimates; the same study sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Giant
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses ()) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The stellar atmosphere, outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around or lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-white to reddish-orange, including the stellar classification, spectral types K and M, sometimes G, but also S-type star, class S stars and most carbon stars. Red giants vary in the way by which they generate energy: * most common red giants are stars on the red-giant branch (RGB) that are still stellar nucleosynthesis, fusing hydrogen into helium in a shell surrounding an inert helium core * red-clump stars in the cool half of the horizontal branch, fusing helium into carbon in their cores via the triple-alpha process * asymptotic-giant-branch (AGB) stars with a helium burning shell outside a degenerate carbon–oxygen core, and a hydrogen-burning shell just beyo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayer Designation
A Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek alphabet, Greek or Latin letter followed by the genitive case, genitive form of its parent constellation's Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1564 stars. The brighter stars were assigned their first systematic names by the German astronomer Johann Bayer in 1603, in his star atlas ''Uranometria''. Bayer catalogued only a few stars too far south to be seen from Germany, but later astronomers (including Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and Benjamin Apthorp Gould) supplemented Bayer's catalog with entries for southern constellations. Scheme Bayer assigned a lowercase Greek alphabet, Greek letter (alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), etc.) or a Latin letter (A, b, c, etc.) to each star he catalogued, combined with the Latin name of the star's parent constellation in genitive case, genitive (possessive) form. The constellation name is frequently abbreviated to a standard three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giant Star
A giant star has a substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or ''dwarf'') star of the same surface temperature. They lie above the main sequence (luminosity class V in the Yerkes spectral classification) on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. The terms ''giant'' and ''dwarf'' were coined for stars of quite different luminosity despite similar temperature or spectral type (namely K and M) by Ejnar Hertzsprung in 1905 or 1906. Giant stars have radii up to a few hundred times the Sun and luminosities over 10 times that of the Sun. Stars still more luminous than giants are referred to as supergiants and hypergiants. A hot, luminous main-sequence star may also be referred to as a giant, but any main-sequence star is properly called a dwarf, regardless of how large and luminous it is. Formation A star becomes a giant after all the hydrogen available for fusion at its core has been depleted and, as a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Brightest Stars
This is a list of stars arranged by their apparent magnitude – their brightness as observed from Earth. It includes all stars brighter than magnitude +2.50 in visible light, measured using a ''V''-band filter in the UBV photometric system. Stars in binary systems (or other multiples) are listed by their ''total'' or ''combined'' brightness if they appear as a single star to the naked eye, or listed separately if they do not. As with all magnitude systems in astronomy, the scale is logarithmic and inverted i.e. lower/more negative numbers are brighter. Most stars on this list appear bright from Earth because they are nearby, not because they are intrinsically luminous. For a list which compensates for the distances, converting the ''apparent'' magnitude to the ''absolute'' magnitude, see the list of most luminous stars. Measurement The Sun is the brightest star as viewed from Earth, at −26.78 mag. The second brightest is Sirius at −1.46 mag. Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stellar Evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is considerably longer than the current age of the universe. The table shows the lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses. All stars are formed from Gravitational collapse, collapsing clouds of gas and dust, often called nebulae or molecular clouds. Over the course of millions of years, these protostars settle down into a state of equilibrium, becoming what is known as a main sequence star. Nuclear fusion powers a star for most of its existence. Initially the energy is generated by the fusion of hydrogen atoms at the stellar core, core of the main-sequence star. Later, as the preponderance of atoms at the core becomes helium, stars like the Sun begin to fuse hydrogen along a spherical shell surrounding the core. This process causes the st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zodiac
The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac belt appear the Moon and the brightest planets, along their orbital planes. The zodiac is divided along the ecliptic into 12 equal parts, called " signs", each occupying 30° of celestial longitude. These signs roughly correspond to the astronomical constellations with the following modern names: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. The signs have been used to determine the time of the year by identifying each sign with the days of the year the Sun is in the respective sign. In Western astrology, and formerly astronomy, the time of each sign is associated with different attributes. The zodiacal system and its angular measurement in 360 sexagesimal degree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slow Irregular Variable
A slow irregular variable (ascribed the GCVS types L, LB and LC) is a variable star that exhibit no or very poorly defined periodicity in their slowly changing light emissions. These stars have often been little-studied, and once more is learnt about them, they are reclassified into other categories such as semiregular variables. Nomenclature Irregular variable stars were first given acronyms based on the letter "I": ''Ia'', ''Ib''. and ''Ic''. These were later refined so that the I codes were used "nebular" or "rapidly irregular" variable stars such as T Tauri and Orion variables. The remaining irregular stars, cool slowly varying giants and supergiants of type Ib or Ic were reassigned to Lb and Lc. When the General Catalogue of Variable Stars standardised its acronyms to be all uppercase, the codes LB and LC were used. Type Lb ''Slow irregular variables of late spectral types ( K, M, C, S); as a rule, they are giants'' The GCVS also claims to give this type to slow irregul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
J Band (infrared)
In infrared astronomy, the J band refers to an infrared window, atmospheric transmission window (1.1 to 1.4 μm) centred on 1.25 micrometres (in the near-infrared). Betelgeuse is the brightest near-IR source in the sky with a J band Magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of −2.99. The next brightest stars in the J band are Antares (−2.7), R Doradus (−2.6), Arcturus (−2.2), and Aldebaran (−2.1). In the J band Sirius is the 9th brightest star. The J band is a frequent source of ground based observations since the wavelengths it covers pass through clouds and other atmospheric gasses. The waveband does however suffer from contamination by water vapor lines and hydroxide emission lines leading to relatively high photometric error. It can be used to scrutinize the photosphere of Giant star, giant and supergiant stars while mostly avoiding opacities from molecular bands and also has access to the 1080 nm He I line which is useful in the study of Circumstellar disc, circums ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union (IAU; , UAI) is an international non-governmental organization (INGO) with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach, education, and development through global cooperation. It was founded on 28 July 1919 in Brussels, Belgium and is based in Paris, France. The IAU is composed of individual members, who include both professional astronomers and junior scientists, and national members, such as professional associations, national societies, or academic institutions. Individual members are organised into divisions, committees, and working groups centered on particular subdisciplines, subjects, or initiatives. the Union had 85 national members and 12,734 individual members, spanning 90 countries and territories. Among the key activities of the IAU is serving as a forum for scientific conferences. It sponsors nine annual symposia and holds a triannual General Assembly that sets policy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
