These star tables and some of the comments were sent to us by Gerald Nordley, science fiction writer, member of the CONTACT group, and a very good friend to world builders! Thank you very much for your help, Mr Nordley!

This is a very basic star table. 
         More information is available here.
         Even more information is available here.

Notes on these star tables:

The stars in these tables are arranged in the classes used in the Main Sequence. Choose your star from these tables and you will have some of the numbers that you need for your solar system and your planet.

Our sun is a G2 star. As we found out from our hands-on activity, our sun formed 4.5 billion years ago. Earth also formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and 3.8 billion years ago, or perhaps even earlier, the first single celled life forms appeared. When you consider that the earth had to cool from a molten state first, life seems to have appeared quite quickly. However, the jump to multicellular life forms took a long time. Multicellular life forms began to develop only 600 million years. If you want to have life forms that you can actually see, you need to choose a star with a long enough life time.

You should choose your star type from these tables. Choose the ones with yellow in their rows:  the others are for your reference/  Write down the information about your star's row, with the headings.

What the Headings mean:

Class: See the page on Main Sequence

Temperature in Degrees Kelvin:  See page on Temperatures in Space. The temperature given is the surface temperature of the star.

Mass (Mass of our sun = 1): See page on Weight, Mass, and Density.

Radius:  The radius is the distance from the center of the star to its surface.

Terrestrial Equivalent Orbit in AUs:

the distance to a star where the planet gets Earth's solar intensity (1372 W/m^2). For very dim stars, planets would have to be very close, and tidal effects are of concern.

This is important because it will help you to put your world in the Life Zone of your solar system.

Lifetime in Billions of Years:

This is how long your star will burn in a stable way. Remember, you need to allow time for your life forms to develop.

If you look at these tables you will see interesting changes as the stars get smaller. Pay special attention to the colored sections of the tables: you will be using these numbers in planning your own solar system.  Choose your star from the rows that have yellow with them.

Stars of types O, B, and A do not have long enough life spans to allow complex life to develop.

Stars of types A, F, and G could possibly have life bearing planets.  

Stars of our types M and E0 are so cool that planets orbiting them could be tidally locked (the same face is always turned toward the sun).  They might also get zapped by solar flares.