Showing posts with label star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label star. Show all posts

Monday, July 14, 2008

Planet: A self-gravitating body that is nearly round

The other day I was looking at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database table on photometric classification. I needed to recall which type was a star and which was a galaxy. So I was interested to see the following two listings in this table buried deep in the SDSS information:
Galaxy: An extended object composed of many stars and other matter.
Star: A a self-luminous gaseous celestial body.
I guess I was just surprised at how pedantic it was.