NMP90

ars could appear.
[13] In 185 AD, they were the first to observe and write about a supernova, now known as SN 185.
[14]
The brightest stellar event in recorded history was the SN 1006 supernova, which was observed in 1006 and
written about by the Egyptian astronomer Ali ibn Ridwan and several Chinese astronomers.[15] The SN
1054 supernova, which gave birth to the Crab Nebula, was also observed by Chinese and Islamic astronomers.[16][17][18]
Medieval Islamic astronomers gave Arabic names to many stars that are still used today and they invented
numerous astronomical instruments that could compute the positions of the stars. They built the first
large observatory research institutes, mainly to produce Zij star catalogues.[19] Among these, the Book of Fixed
Stars (964) was written by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, who observed a number of stars, star
clusters (including the Omicron Velorum and Brocchi's Clusters) and galaxies (including the Andromeda Galaxy).
[20]
According to A. Zahoor, in the 11th century, the Persian polymath scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni described the Milky
Way galaxy as a multitude of fragments having the properties of nebulous stars, and gave the latitudes of various
stars during a lunar eclipse in 1019.[21]
According to Josep Puig, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many
stars that almost touched one another and appeared to be a continuous image due to the effect of refraction from
sublunary material, citing his observation of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars on 500 AH (1106/1107 AD) as
evidence.[22] Early European astronomers such as Tycho Brahe identified new stars in the night sky (later
termed novae), suggesting that the heavens were not immutable. In 1584, Giordano Bruno suggested that the stars
were like the Sun, and may have other planets, possibly even Earth-like, in orbit around them,[23] an idea that had
been suggested earlier by the ancient Greek philosophers, Democritus and Epicurus,[24] and by medieval Islamic
cosmologists[25] such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi.[26] By the following century, the idea of the stars being the same as the
Sun was reaching a consensus among astronomers. To explain why these stars exerted no net gravitational pull on
the Solar System, Isaac Newton suggested that the stars were equally distributed in every direction, an idea
prompted by the theologian Richard Bentley.[27]
The Italian astronomer Geminiano Montanari recorded observing variations in luminosity of the star Algol in
1667. Edmond Halley published the first measurements of the proper motion of a pair of nearby "fixed" stars,
demonstrating that they had changed positions since the time of the ancient Greek astronomers Ptolemy and
Hipparchus.[23]
William Herschel was the first astronomer to attempt to determine the distribution of stars in the sky. During the
1780s, he established a series of gauges in 600 directions and counted the stars observed along each line of sight.
From this, he deduced that the number of stars steadily increased toward one side of the sky, in the direction of the
Milky Way core. His son John Herschel repeated this study in the southern hemisphere and found a corresponding
increase in the same direction.[28] In addition to his other accomplishments, William Herschel is noted for his discovery
that some stars do not merely lie along the same line of sight, but are physical companions that form binary star
systems.[29]
The science of stellar spectroscopy was pioneered by Joseph von Fraunhofer and Angelo Secchi. By comparing the
spectra of stars such as Sirius to the Sun, they found differences in the strength and number of their absorption lines
—the dark lines in stellar spectra caused by the atmosphere's absorption of specific frequencies. In 1865, Secchi
began classifying stars into spectral types.[30] The modern version of the stellar classification scheme was developed
by Annie J. Cannon during the early 1900s.[31]
The first direct measurement of the distance to a star (61 Cygni at 11.4 light-years) was made in 1838 by Friedrich
Bessel using the parallax technique. Parallax measurements demonstrated the vast separation of the stars in the
heavens.[23] Observation of double stars gained increasing importance during the 19th century. In 1834, Friedrich
Bessel observed changes in the proper motion of the star Sirius and inferred a hidden companion. Edward
Pickering discovered the first spectroscopic binary in 1899 when he observed the periodic splitting of the spectral
lines of the star Mizar in a 104-day period. Detailed observations of many binary star systems were collected by
astronomers such as Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve and S. W. Burnham, allowing the masses of stars to be
determined from computation of orbital elements. The first solution to the problem of deriving an orbit of binary stars
from telescope observations was made by Felix Savary in 1827.[32]
The twentieth century saw increasingly rapid advances in the scientific study of stars. The photograph became a
valuable astronomical tool. Karl Schwarzschild discovered that the color of a star and, hence, its temperature, could
be determined by comparing the visual magnitude against the photographic magnitude. The development of
the photoelectric photometer allowed precise measurements of magnitude at multiple wavelength intervals. In
1921 Albert A. Michelson made the first measurements of a stellar diameter using an interferometer on the Hooker
telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory.[33]
Important theoretical work on the physical structure of stars occurred during the first decades of the twentieth century.
In 1913, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram was developed, propelling the astrophysical study of stars.
Successful models were developed to explain the interiors of stars and stellar evolution. Cecilia Payne-
Gaposchkin first proposed that stars were made primarily of hydrogen and helium in her 1925 PhD thesis. [34] The
spectra of stars were further understood through advances in quantum physics. This allowed the chemical
composition of the stellar atmosphere to be determined.[35]
Infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showing

hundreds of thousands of stars in the Milky Way galaxy
With the exception of rare events such as supernovae and supernova impostors, individual stars have primarily been
observed in the Local Group,[36] and especially in the visible part of the Milky Way (as demonstrated by the detailed
star catalogues available for the Milky Way galaxy) and its satellites. [37] Individual stars such as Cepheid variables
have been observed in the M87[38] and M100 galaxies of the Virgo Cluster,[39] as well as luminous stars in some other
relatively nearby galaxies.[40] With the aid of gravitational lensing, a single star (named Icarus) has been observed at
9 billion light-years away.[41][42]
Designations
Main articles: Stellar designation, Astronomical naming conventions, and Star catalogue
The concept of a constellation was known to exist during the Babylonian period. Ancient sky watchers imagined that
prominent arrangements of stars formed patterns, and they associated these with particular aspects of nature or their
myths. Twelve of these formations lay along the band of the ecliptic and these became the basis of astrology.[43] Many
of the more prominent individual stars were given names, particularly with Arabic or Latin designations.
As well as certain constellations and the Sun itself, individual stars have their own myths.[44] To the Ancient Greeks,
some "stars", known as planets (Greek πλανήτης (planētēs), meaning "wanderer"), represented various important
deities, from which the names of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were taken.
[44]
(Uranus and Neptune were Greek and Roman gods, but neither planet was known in Antiquity because of their low
brightness. Their names were assigned by later astronomers.)
Circa 1600, the names of the constellations were used to name the stars in the corresponding regions of the sky. The
German astronomer Johann Bayer created a series of star maps and applied Greek letters

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ars could appear.

Infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showing

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