Assignment title: Information
Using a Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
Instructions: You can also copy and paste the web address into your browser:
http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/how- do-stars- form-and- evolve/
Background:
Notice that the stars in Figure 5 are not uniformly distributed. Rather, about 90 percent of all stars fall
along a band that runs from the upper-left corner to the lower-right corner of the H-R diagram. These
"ordinary" stars are called main-sequence stars. As you can see in Figure 5, the hottest main-sequence
stars are intrinsically the brightest, and, conversely, the coolest are the dimmest. The absolute magnitude
of main-sequence stars is also related to their mass. The hottest (blue) stars are about 50 times more
massive than the Sun, whereas the coolest (red) stars are only 1/ 10 as massive. Therefore, on the H-R
diagram, the main-sequence stars appear in decreasing order, from hotter, more massive blue stars to
cooler, less massive red stars (Lutgens, Tarbuck, & Tasa, 2014).
Assignment: Use Figure 5 to answer the questions. Once all questions have been answered for both
part 1 and part 2.