The Size, Shape and Temperature of the Stars

Abstract

People have always looked up at the night sky and wondered what the stars are and how they came to be there. There are many beautiful myths and legends which claim to give us the answers, but it is only in the last 100 years that the science of Astronomy has begun to tell us what the stars are really like. In this talk I am going to discuss three specific questions, how hot and how large are the stars and what is their shape ? Furthermore, I ought to make it clear that I am going to discuss these questions largely from my own point of view. The answer to our second question, how did the stars come to be there, belongs to Professor Longair’s talk on Cosmology.