Hacker News Reader

Why do the populations seem backwards? You'd think the first stars would be Pop. I, then the next Pop. II, then III, and maybe someday we'd get to IV. Instead they seem to work backwards?

View on HN

Because the names were determined by when they found those groups of stars, rather than when the stars they found were formed. They only later realized that their distinct groupings based on observed metal content were caused by stellar formation processes.

Regrettably, the stars didn't show up in their telescopes with labels and histories attached.

Same problem with categorizing star luminosity... I wish we could make a shift to these cumbersome categories, but cultural inertia is tough to overcome

Yeah, seeing stars with negative luminosity seems weird. Negative? Are they removing light? =) Scales are fun when the index is arbitrary to the data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com