Question

Which of the following cannot be determined from the spectrum of a star?



the chemicals in the atmosphere of the star

the motion of the star

the temperature of the atmosphere of the star

the chemicals in the core of the star

Answer 1

@ShadowLegendX

Answer 2

First of all, what class is this? You can really get in depth with the answer here. Second of all, what do you think/know so far about the answers, can you eliminate any already or not?

Answer 3

@Kainui First off, thank you for helping. :)

Its for an Intergrated Physics/Chemistry class.

I do know that its not the motion of the star. I thought it was because spectrums can be used to see the light, and heat, and radiation of things, but I didn't think it could measure the motion, but I answered motion before, and it said motion was wrong.

Answer 4

Ahhh well here's some help then. So when you hear a car approaching you and then whizz by it makes a certain kind of noise, WEEEEEEE-rooooooom. You know what I mean? That's because sound is a wave and waves are vibrations. So when the car approaches the sound is at a certain frequency, but as it approaches you it seems like the frequency is sped up because the wave source is approaching you, and then when the car passes by the wave source leaves so the frequency of the sound is lower because it's moving away while vibrating the air towards you. This is called the doppler effect.

Now similarly, light is an electromagnetic wave, so you can imagine the star moving away or towards you and in doing so the light you see will also be compressed by this same effect. Since blue light is a higher frequency, stars that are moving towards us are said to be "blue shifted" and since red is the other end of the visible light spectrum within the entire electromagnetic spectrum, if a star is moving away from us it's said to be red shifted.

There's a little thing to play around with here that I found you might also like to adjust and see how it looks: https://www.classzone.com/books/earth_science/terc/content/visualizations/es2802/es2802page01.cfm?chapter_no=visualization