Small Eight Point Lighted Capiz Tree Topper Star

Our lighted capiz eight pointed holiday star Christmas tree topper is about 7.75 inches across. The front of the lighted capiz star Christmas tree topper has a large capiz shell panel in the center part with soft gold metal scroll designs and eight smaller capiz shell panels around the outside. The back of the lighted capiz eight pointed holiday star tree topper consists of one panel of capiz shell. There is one light in each of the eight points plus two more in the center of the lighted capiz star Christmas tree topper to total ten, 12 volt mini lights. There is a 4.5 foot green lead cord to plug your lighted capiz holiday star tree topper with an add-a-plug connector. The lighted capiz holiday star tree topper comes with replacement bulbs and fuses.

Types of Stars.
Pulsating Stars.
Some stars have the peculiar habit of pulsating or changing in brightness every few days. The North Star, Polaris, is one of these. In a little less than four days it changes from bright to dim and then back to bright again. The change is too slight for you to see with your naked eyes, but it can easily be noticed through a telescope.
There are many such pulsating stars. Astronomers believe that they expand very rapidly and grow in brilliance as they do so. In a short period of time, the expanding gases cave in with a rush. As they collapse to smaller size such stars grow dimmer again.

Twin Stars and Eclipsing Stars.
In addition to the pulsating stars, there are millions of twin stars, called binaries. These are double stars that revolve around each other something like a spinning dumbbell. Most of these double stars are so far away and so dim that only spectroscopes, or instruments that spread light rays apart so they can be studied, can show that they are really twins. Others can be seen through telescopes. Some of them appear to dim and brighten like the pulsating stars. But this is simply because they eclipse each other or get in the way of each other�s light, as they revolve around each other. When they are side by side in relation to the earth, their combined light makes them look like a single bright star. Later, when one moves in front of the other and blocks out its light, the observer seems to see a single star that has suddenly dimmed.

Exploding Stars.
Once in a few hundred years a new and unusually bright star seems to appear in the heavens. It is called a supernova. When astronomers study such supernova, they find that they are really stars which already existed, but which suddenly have increased greatly in brightness. Astronomers think that gigantic explosions cause supernovae. Some astronomers believe that a star bursts into a supernova when it has run out of the hydrogen which had kept it going and when its spinning has slowed down enough. When these two things happen, the star may cave in because of its strong gravitational pull. The great mass of material rushing into the center of the star would produce a gigantic lump of heavy stuff under tremendous pressure. This might blow up in one great blast of energy.

How Bright Are the Stars.
The ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy drew up the earliest list of the brightness of the stars about A.D. 150. He called about twenty five of the brightest ones stars of the first magnitude. The stars that were just visible to the naked eye were called stars of the sixth magnitude. The remaining stars were grouped into stars of the second, third, fourth and fifth magnitude.
This general scheme of measuring the brightness of the stars is still followed, although it has been improved upon. On Ptolemy�s scale of magnitude, not all stars in the same group are of the same brightness. Some stars in the same magnitude are brighter than others, the lower the number, the brighter the star. We indicate the brightest stars by writing a minus sign in front of their numbers or by means of decimal points for figures of less than one. Sirius, the brightest star, has a magnitude of 1.6. The magnitude of Canapus is 0.9, that of Vega is 0.1 and Altair is 0.9. On such a scale, the magnitude of the sun is 27. The full moon has a magnitude of approximately 11.2.
A first magnitude star, such as Sirius, may be almost 16 times as bright as another first magnitude star such as Regulus, on Ptolemy�s scale. On the modern scale, a star of any magnitude is 2.512 times as bright as a star one magnitude fainter. This means that a first magnitude star is exactly 100 times as bright as a sixth magnitude star. The 200 inch telescope at the Mount Palomar observatory, on a mountain in California, can photograph stars to the magnitude of 22.5. Select this link to view our fiber optic angel tree toppers.