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Name: The Pleiades - THE PLEIADES - ot l ; rw Al X 4 : diffwe learned in a3 prev.zous lab, the HR Diagram contains a wealth of in eljent type§ of stars in existence, and how they evolve HR Diagram with data solely from stars that formed toget 7 We formation about the ' th . ; : Rt eathor s : : e Pleiades. Using the Stellarium are and how old they are., REQUIRED MATERIALS This lab requires use of the following programs ( ® Microsoft Excel e Stellarium © You should make sure you have all of the extra star catalogs downloaded before starting this lab. Instructions are included in the Appendix. see Appendix for program details): IMPORTANT TERMS In this lab we will be investigating the Color-Magnitude Diagram (CMD) for the Pleiades. If you recall, the color of a star tells you its temperature, and the magnitude of a star is related to its brightness (or luminosity), so in essence, a CMD is nothing more than an HR Diagram. In this case, though, all of the stars plotted on the diagram will belong to the same stellar cluster. Because of this, we can assume they all reside the same distance away. In the latter part of the lab, once we have plotted the stellar data onto an HR diagram, we will compare the points to a “standard main sequence”, or Zero Age Main Sequence (ZAMS). This representsghe “starting poivnt”_ro_rfhs“tars once thgy become main sequence stars Stella.»r properties such as temperature and [uminosity will change slightly as a star ages (typically getting cooler yet more luminous over time), so we can use the ZAMS as a lower boundary indicator of where a standard main sequence would be located. 67