Stars are the workhorses of the universe and account for most of its mass. They come in many shapes and sizes, some as small as just a few miles across and others that are as large as much of our solar system. Some are hundreds of times hotter than the Sun and others are just a few thousand degrees. When stars start running out of fuel they do some crazy things like explode into supernovae or implode into tightly packed white dwarfs or black holes.

This Course includes the following great BONUS LESSONS:

• What on Earth is Astronomy?

• Mini-Lesson: Eclipses

• Mini-Lesson: Meteor Showers

• Mini-Lesson: Aurora

Stars and Star Clusters

1. Objective

2. Warm-up activity

3. Stars in our sky: number and distance

4. Stars as related to the entire Universe: scope and function

5. Luminosity and magnitude

6. Absolute magnitude and apparent magnitude

7. Magnitude scale

8. The main sequence of stars

9. T Tauri stars

10. Red giant stars

11. Blue giant stars

12. White dwarf stars

13. Neutron stars

14. Pulsars

15. Red and brown dwarfs, and sub-stellar objects

16. Nuclear fusion

17. Definition of a star

18. The Sun: temperature, features, characteristics and atmospheres

19. Star size, mass and density

20. Star clustering and gravity

21. Open and closed star clusters

22. Galactic and globular star clusters

23. Prisms and the range of light

24. Red and blue shifts in the spectrum

25. The Doppler effect

26. Variable stars: pulsating, intrinsic, extrinsic and cataclysmic

27. Cepheid variable stars and distance calculations

28. Multiple star systems: binary and trinary stars

29. Types of orbits

30. Supernovae: cause and effect

31. Black holes

32. Test questions

33. Cross-curricular activities