Astronomy › Section L · Analysing starlight and the stellar census › Topic L.3
Spectra of stars and brown dwarfs
Spread a star's light into a spectrum and it is crossed by dark lines, like a barcode. The pattern of those lines sorts stars into the classes O, B, A, F, G, K and M, and beyond them into the cool brown dwarfs that never quite became stars.
In this topic
- Barcodes in starlight
- Temperature, not composition
- Why hydrogen lines peak near 10,000 K
- The spectral sequence O B A F G K M
- What each class shows
- Subclasses, the Sun and 'metals'
- Worked example: classifying three spectra
- Brown dwarfs: failed stars
- Spectral classes L, T and Y
- Worked example: why brown dwarfs need infrared eyes
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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