Hertzprung Pussell Diagram
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The Hertzprung Russell Diagram
Date 16/11/00 Jack Morlidge
Abstract
The purpose of this assignment was to plot and interpret a Hertzprung Russell diagram for the twenty nearest and twenty brightest stars given in the workbook. This involved the calculation of the " Absolute Visible Magnitude" for the twenty nearest stars. ( See appendix 1 ) Questions 1 4 from the assignment list were used to give interpretation of aspects of the diagram whilst the practical exercise gave some measure of reality to the diagram by observing actual colours in the stars themselves. Here it begins to make sense that Betelgeuse at a distance of 131 parsecs, shining with an apparent magnitude of 0.45 having a spectral class of M2 and giving a red hue must be very massive, cool super giant. Unfortunately the weather for observation was not good and some detail was lost as mentioned in the observational report below.
Introduction
The Hertzprung Russell diagram is a very convenient method of displaying spectral class or temperature against a stars luminosity. The two men, Dane Ejnar Hertzprung and American Henry Norris Russell independently discovered and plotted a new kind of graph. On the vertical axis each plotted a measure of the brightness of a star whilst on the x axis a measure of temperature was measured.
All points plotted fell within three distinct regions of the graph showing that stars posses a limited set of possible combinations of brightness and temperature...