when molecular clouds – large clumps of gas and dust within galaxies – become unable to support their own weight they collapse inwards into a cascading series of overdensities and clumps which then become stars. even if they can support themselves, collisions between clouds, supernovae, or other dramatic events can cause dynamical disruptions in molecular clouds which trigger star formation.
Luritja aboriginal astronomers have a classification system for by-eye observation of stars: Tjilkera (white) stars, Tataka Tjilkera (red/white), Tataka (red) and Tataka Indora (very red) [1, 2]. Astronomers today, thanks to Williamina Flemming and Annie Jump Cannon (among other Harvard Computers), use a rather opaque system of stellar classification called the Harvard spectral classification: OBAFGKM(LTY), ranging from white/blue to red/brown.
Splitting light, Pink Floyd, 19th century astronomy, spectra, and more
This is the beginning of a short series about the things I’ve learned in order to do astronomy research. This particular article may be insightful for citizen scientists or undergraduate astronomers interested in using and exploring their data via python. Installing python via anaconda The anaconda distribution is a suite of python (and R) packages, including conda, the python package