abstract:In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. The spectral class of a star is a designated class of a star describing the ionization of its photosphere (the atomic excitations that are most prominent in the light), giving an objective measure of the photosphere's temperature.
Besides requiring astronomers to dream up a new mnemonic for their stellarclassification, the existence of a grey area between stars and planets reveals the extent to which the processes of planetary and stellar formation are still a mystery.
Subsequent observations with an infra-red telescope, which can see things that are too cool to shine with visible light, showed that it was a very faint star so faint that it is off the bottom of astronomers' scale of stellarclassification.