classification

By now, we’ve spent a heck of a lot of time exploring spiral galaxies.

It makes sense–they’re certainly the most photogenic. Seriously. Do me a favor and do a quick Google search for galaxies. When I did, nearly all the results were spirals…even though spirals are not the most common galaxies in the universe.

There is, of course, another reason we’re so familiar with spirals right now. We dipped our toes in the waters of studying galaxies by exploring our own home galaxy–a reasonable starting point. Our Milky Way just happens to be a spiral.

Well…it doesn’t “just happen” to be a spiral. But we’ll get to the reasons for that…

For now, let’s take a dive into all the different types of galaxies.

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Meet the sun: a G2 class star towards the middle of its lifespan.

Wait a second…G2? What does that even mean?

It’s all part of a way astronomers break down the billions of stars in the sky and organize them by temperature. They can use a star’s spectrum to figure out what it’s made of, and that helps them figure out how hot it is.

But really…being able to read stellar spectra (plural for spectrum) is only so helpful. There are billions. It helps to have an organizational system.

That way, if an astronomer sees a stellar spectrum that looks a certain way, they can know immediately that it’s a certain class of star.

So…how exactly are stars classified?

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