Astronomy › Section M · Celestial distances › Topic M.4
The H-R diagram and cosmic distances
Most stars neither pulsate nor lie close enough for parallax. A careful look at a star's spectrum can still reveal its luminosity, and with it the star's distance, by placing it on the H-R diagram.
In this topic
- When there is no variable star
- Temperature is not enough
- Recall: the luminosity class
- From class to distance
- Worked example: a Sun-like star
- Worked example: why the class matters
- Clusters and main-sequence fitting
- The real world is messy
- How magnitude errors become distance errors
- The cosmic distance ladder
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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