Starlight Barcodes: Spectra

Students learn that a spectrum spreads light by color, that spectral lines act like fingerprints for elements, and that spectra reveal what stars are made of, how hot they are, and whether they are moving toward or away from us.

Grades 5-8About 15 minutes of narrated flight, plus discussion stops8 stops

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What students will see and do

Students fly from Earth to the Sun, Vega, Betelgeuse, Rigel, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy and the James Webb Space Telescope, which reads the air of planets around other stars. Aetherion pauses for discussion at the Sun (discovering helium from light alone), Rigel (why blue stars are hotter than red ones) and Andromeda (what widespread redshift says about the universe).

Learning objectives

• Describe how a prism or grating spreads white light into a spectrum.
• Explain how dark and bright spectral lines identify chemical elements, using the 1868 discovery of helium as an example.
• Compare the colors and temperatures of stars such as Rigel, Vega, the Sun and Betelgeuse.
• Identify redshift and blueshift as evidence of motion away from or toward an observer.

NGSS connections

Stops on this journey

1. Rainbows and Prisms
2. Fingerprints in Sunlight (discussion stop)
3. Vega, the Hot White Star
4. Betelgeuse, the Cool Red Giant
5. Rigel, the Blue Supergiant (discussion stop)
6. A Glowing Cloud
7. Light on the Move (discussion stop)
8. Reading the Air of Other Worlds

Vocabulary

• spectrum
• prism
• spectrograph
• spectral lines
• element
• nebula
• redshift
• blueshift