Harvard classification

British

/ ˈhɑːvəd /

noun

a classification of stars based on the characteristic spectral absorption lines and bands of the chemical elements present See spectral type

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of Harvard classification

C20: named after the observatory at Harvard, Massachusetts, where it was prepared and published as part of The Henry Draper Catalogue (1924)

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Harvard classification

Such a scale is indeed implicit in the Harvard classification of the spectra.

From Lectures on Stellar Statistics by Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023