Our Small Eight Point Lighted Capiz Tree Topper Star
is about 7.75 inches across. The front of the Capiz Star Christmas Tree Toppers 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 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 Capiz Christmas Tree Toppers 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. Select to see a complete listing of our Christmas Decorations Ideas.

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. Check out our selection of Christmas Tree Toppers.

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 others 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. Select to view our Christmas Tree Storage Bags.

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. Check out our selection of Power Strips and Power Protection Supplies to safely display your holiday decorations.

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 Ptolemys 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