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The Education Centre For Astronomy

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The Nature Of The Stars Syllabus

There are ten lessons and each one reveals a different aspect of the nature of the stars. 

1.    The Constellations

This first lesson is a feast of fun exercises with star maps to increase your familiarity with the constellations. What can you learn from counting stars? Locating the patterns and ‘joining the dots’, naming and labelling stars and using finder charts are all included in this lesson.  

2.    The Sphere of the Stars

Living on the Earth and looking out at the stars is rather like sitting on a spinning horse on a fairground carousel, looking out at the trees. Making the large jig saw star map in this lesson will help you to make sense of our dizzying view of the sky.   

3.    The Distance to the Stars

Star maps have their many uses but they are lacking the third dimension. The first major breakthrough in finding the distance to the stars was made by measuring the tiny annual movements of the nearer stars.

 4.    What the Stars are Made Of

This lesson is the fascinating detective story of the spectrum and the discovery of the composition of the stars, which some had claimed to be impossible. Use your new-found spectroscopic skills to identify the elements in the stellar spectra provided in the lesson.

 5.    Giants, Supergiants and Dwarfs

Stars have formed in a whole range of sizes and colours. By comparing one star with another you will see a pattern emerge - there are rules involved in star-making. Once these rules are understood we can use the information to probe even deeper into space.

 6.    Stars in Motion

In this lesson you will discover more of the secrets of starlight.  You will discover that the stars are on the move.  Some stars swell and shrink, single stars are really pairs, the Galaxy rotates and the Universe expands.

 7.    Temperature, Colour and Size

To the naked eye, most stars look white, just a handful showing a faint hue. To solve the puzzle of coloured stars astronomers must use all the tools available to them. In this lesson you will find that the actual brightness of a star is intimately related to its colour and size.

 8.    Binary Stars

Apart from the Sun, stars known to have orbiting planets are rare. However, we know of lots of stars which orbit around other stars. In some cases three or more stars take up the celestial dance. You will learn how astronomers classify binary stars according to the way we detect their binary nature.

 9.    Variable Stars

Over millions of years our Sun has shone steadily, casting its life-giving glow upon its family of planets. Not all stars are so calm. There are stars which shine like beacons and then fade away to obscurity, stars which flare up, pulsate or even explode. In this lesson you will enjoy classifying variable stars from the light they emit.

 10.      The Sun and Time

This final lesson brings us back down to Earth, looking at our own nearby star, the Sun.  In this lesson you will learn how to make a sundial, and how to read the time   Why do we have a sun that is ‘mean’?  What is the equation of time? The answers to these questions are in this lesson.

On completion of the course each student will receive a
Nature of the Stars Practical Astronomy Certificate.

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