STARS BY THE COLORS (Words & Music by A. Marscher ©2003)
1. Objects less than 1000 degrees emit little visible light
But with infrared eyes we'd see them illuminate the night
Newborn stars, shrouded by dust, shine only in infrared
So do brown dwarfs with mass so low, their cores energetically dead
2. Red dwarf stars, a common sort, have low luminosity
Living for hundreds of billion years in cool anonymity
Luminous red giants are middle-aged, fat but not so hot
With core collapsed to Earth-like size, hydrogen fuel is shot
Chorus:
A star's life and its fate are revealed by its light
Blue means hot, heavy, and short-lived, most intrinsically bright
White, yellow, orange, and red, from spectacular to dull
Each less hot, less luminous, longer to live - color reveals it all
3. Sun-like stars are fairly hot, 5-6000 K
With moderate mass and radiative watts, average in every way
Yellow color and rich spectral lines always give them away
Encircled by planets, providing them with the light of day
4. Blue stars, bright and clear across great distances
They burn out fast, 10 million years in some instances
Shine so bright in UV light, excite magnificent clouds
Born in clusters conspicuous, stand out in the crowd
[chorus]
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