Stellar Evolution Lecture

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The public video lectures cover just the astronomy content from the Astronomy Notes textbook. The public lectures do not include the material that is for the astronomy class such as how to use the class Canvas, lecture outlines in the Student Guide, exam review documents, etc. Students in the Bakersfield College astronomy classes should use the astronomy class lecture videos posted in the class Canvas to get that class-specific content.

This lecture video is about chapter 13 in the Astronomy Notes textbook, "Lives and Deaths of the Stars". The short videoes are collected into a YouTube playlist, so they should play one right after the other if you go to the Stellar Evolution Public playlist. The videoes will appear in a new tab.

Stellar Evolution Public Playlist

Here are what each video is about (select the video link to go to that particular video in the series). Here are the individual videos for stellar evolution:

1. Video 1: (for webpages #2, #3, + #4) This video is about the life cycle of low mass stars like the Sun, from birth to death. It first covers how long a star can live. It then covers giant molecular clouds and H II regions and then looks at protostars. It ends with the T-Tauri stage and adult main sequence stage. First of a set about the lives and deaths of stars and first lecture for chapter 13 of Astronomy Notes.
2. Video 2: (for webpages #5, #6, #9, + #11) This video is about the dying stages of low mass stars like the Sun. It covers why stars become red giants and how planetary nebulae are formed. It covers white dwarfs and ends with the use of star clusters to test and confirm our stellar evolution models and how the main sequence turnoff gives us the age of the star cluster. Second of a set about the lives and deaths of stars and second lecture for chapter 13 of Astronomy Notes.
3. Video 3: (for webpages #7 and #12) This video is about the dying stages of high mass stars with more than 8 solar masses. It covers supernova and neutron stars. Included in the discussion is stellar nucleosynthesis, how pulsars pulsate, and the conservation of angular momentum. Our Sun will NOT go through this death sequence. Third of a set about the lives and deaths of stars and third lecture for chapter 13 of Astronomy Notes.
4. Video 4: (for webpage #13) This video is about black holes. It covers how we find stellar mass black holes by looking for bright X-ray sources and then determining the mass of the source. Following that it covers how we determine the maximum possible diameter of the black hole and then gives a brief treatment of the warping of spacetime predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. See chapter 6 of Astronomy Notes for more about General Relativity. Fourth of a set about the lives and deaths of stars and fourth lecture for chapter 13 of Astronomy Notes.

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last updated: June 24, 2022