“How do we know all that we know about the stars, since they are so far away and no one from Earth has ever visited them?” A fair question to be sure. While astronomers believe they have decent estimates of the mass, temperature, size, and composition of “nearby” stars, it can boggle the student mind to think of how this type of distant science is even possible. The activity described here will not fully answer the question, but it should give students an insight into this process. In keeping with the Benchmark, “Understanding the Nature of Scientific Inquiry,” students can use a 50-cent analytical spectroscope to gather, analyze, and interpret scientific data (Kendall and Marzano1996).