What type of light does a star produce?

This energy moves outward through the layers of the star until it finally reaches the star’s outer surface. The outer layer of the star glows brightly, sending the energy out into space as electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, heat, ultraviolet light, and radio waves.

What is the star spectrum?

A star’s spectrum contains information about its temperature, chemical composition, and intrinsic luminosity. Spectrograms secured with a slit spectrograph consist of a sequence of images of the slit in the light of the star at successive wavelengths.

Do stars produce light?

Stars shine because they are extremely hot (which is why fire gives off light — because it is hot). The source of their energy is nuclear reactions going on deep inside the stars. That warms the outer layers of the star, which gives off heat and light.

What is a star with an iron core called?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. In astronomy, an iron star is a hypothetical type of compact star. Unrelatedly, the term “iron star” is also used for blue supergiants which have a forest of “forbidden” FeII lines in their spectra. They are potentially quiescent hot luminous blue variables.

Which fusion of elements does iron come from?

The fusion of hydrogen nuclei uses up hydrogen to produce helium and energy. Hydrogen is the fuel for the process. As the hydrogen is used up, the core of the star condenses and heats up even more. This promotes the fusion of heavier and heavier elements, ultimately forming all the elements up to iron.

How do stars produce photons?

When the core of the star reaches about 15 million Kelvin, hydrogen fusion can begin. In this process, atoms of hydrogen are crushed together through a multi-stage process to form helium. And then, the photons are released from the surface of the star, and free to cross the vacuum of space.

What are the characteristics of a spectrum of light from a star?

A stellar spectrum can reveal many properties of stars, such as their chemical composition, temperature, density, mass, distance and luminosity.

How do stars produce light How do stars produce elements?

When the new star reaches a certain size, a process called nuclear fusion ignites, generating the star’s vast energy. The fusion process forces hydrogen atoms together, transforming them into heavier elements such as helium, carbon and oxygen.

How do stars produce iron?

After the hydrogen in the star’s core is exhausted, the star can fuse helium to form progressively heavier elements, carbon and oxygen and so on, until iron and nickel are formed. Supernova explosions result when the cores of massive stars have exhausted their fuel supplies and burned everything into iron and nickel.

Does the sun produce iron?

The Sun is not hot enough, even at its center, to make iron by the fusion of lighter elements. Instead, exploding stars, called supernovae, make all the iron strewn in the universe. The Sun is 4.6 billion years old, but our galaxy is 8 billion years older.

What gives a white light spectrum from a star?

A gas of hydrogen atoms will produce an absorptionline spectrum if it is between you (your telescope+spectrograph) and a continuum light source, and an emissionline spectrum if viewed from a different angle. If you were to observe the star (a source of white light) directly, you would see a continuous spectrum, with no breaks.

How do you make a line spectrum of a star?

A gas of hydrogen atoms will produce an absorption line spectrum if it is between you (your telescope+spectrograph) and a continuum light source, and an emission line spectrum if viewed from a different angle. If you were to observe the star (a source of white light) directly, you would see a continuous spectrum, with no breaks.

What can we learn about a star from its spectra?

If the lines shift back and forth we can learn that the star may be orbiting another star. We can estimate the mass and size of the star from this. If the lines grow and fade in strength we can learn about the physical changes in the star. Spectral information can also tell us about material around stars.

What do absorption lines in a star’s spectrum mean?

So, if you see absorption lines from some particular element — say, iron — in a star’s spectrum, then it means two things: there is iron in the outer atmosphere of that star and. the temperature of the outer atmosphere puts many of the iron atoms in the right energy state to absorb light.