Interesting facts you should know about stars.
Singing twinkle, twinkle little star, but within the boundaries of Earth’s atmosphere, words associated with stars aren’t exactly correct. And, it’s valid and realistic form is less soothing or instead be a gigantic ball emitting gas everywhere.
Stars are massive planetary bodies mainly fueled with hydrogen and helium that generates heat and light from inside the shaking nuclear build up in their cores. Moreover, in the cosmic universe, stars are comprehensively known as an astronomical entity and represent foundational pieces of galaxies. Besides, stars are responsible for the creation and distribution of huge elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and their features are linked with the characteristics of the planetary system. Thus, the study of birth, existence, mortality and specifically the study of stars is prime to the field of Astronomy. However, it’s impossible to find out how many stars exist in the space, but astronomers gave an estimated idea about milky way; there are about 300 billion stars in the galaxy alone.
Birth of stars
According to the astronomers, the lifetime of stars consists of billions of years. Generally speaking, the giant the star is, the more the chances of a short span.
Further, the origin of stars or we can say birth mainly takes place inside the Nebulae, which are known as Hydrogen-based power clouds. Over many years, the gravity in the space caused grave matter in the core of Nebula, which results in the collapsation of mass under their weight.
Besides, stars glide over the developing phase in which the contraction of gases occurs, recognised as a protostar. Nebula carries dust which covers them like a cloud creating obstacles to astronomers to detect those protostars.
Moreover, A protostar spins faster when it gets smaller due to the conservation of Angular Momentum in it. And, it results in increasing the pressure causing the temperature to rise. And, stars enter this phase known as T Tauri phase.
That sparkles and shine.
If you ever noticed some stars have a different kind of shine than others, they are brighter than others. There is a factor behind their brightness, how much energy they release out — known as Luminosity- and how distant they are from Earth.
Because of the temperature of stars, their colour also varies and depends on that. Some stars appear as white or blue due to the hotness while cooler ones seem to have red and orange pigments. Moreover, Astronomers can classify the stars into distinct categories; the main sequence, white dwarf stars and other types include dwarfs, giants, and supergiants. There is a superior quality of Supergiants; they may have radii thousands of times more significant than that of our sun.
When stars reach towards the end of their lives, almost half of their hydrogen has converted to helium. Helium spreads all over to the star’ nucleus(centre)and increases the star’s temperature, causing its outer part of hot fumes to enlarge. These big bulging stars are known as red giants.
Big bang star
Some stars forsake the progressive path and go out with a bang representing as supernovae. Whereas some stars appear to be bulging red giants from the outer part and contracting from the inside(core); ultimately becoming so dense and eventually collapsed, causing the star to blow up. These tragic explodes left behind a core, and it becomes a neutron star, if the remains of the core are huge, it can turn into a black hole.
Some astronomers have predicted the patterns of the destruction resulted in a luminosity, astronomers can utilise them as “standard candles”, or astronomical tools help them to measure distances in the space and to calculate the rate of expansion.
Discovering stars
The shimmery lines covering the whole sky above us, you may see infinite stars twinkling above you at the blue yonder or maybe none at all. In urban areas, artificial lights have surrounded the whole cities, and it’s almost impossible to gaze stars. In comparison, some parts of this universe are so dark and shadowy that staring at the sky unveils the richness of the celestial beauty. In ancient times, people watch over the stars for all sort of problems, by identifying the different position of stars-known as constellations; tracking the movement of stars determines the seasons for farming as well as helps in navigating the directions across seas.
Shooting star
A shooting star is also known as a meteor; these are small rocks in space. Besides, meteors move very fast and eventually blow up when they strike the Earth’s atmosphere and create a shiny, bright shooting star. However, once they hit the atmosphere, they travel up to 25 miles per hour. While some travel as fast as 160,000 miles an hour.
Joining of stars
Stars have this unique capability to make a pair with another star in orbit around each other. Besides, the giant red star consists of heavy matter expanding notably that the outer layers are close enough to the second star. Eventually, some gas in the outer parts of a giant star may get pulled in by the second star’s gravity, and get pulled onto the second star.
Young stars and their energy
Young stars usually get their energy from gravity; they slowly contract and squeeze altogether and produces energy which emits light. Moreover, once the centre of the star is hot and thick enough (millions of degrees), nuclear fusion can finally start. Stars can take 20 million years to reach this point. Once it begins nuclear fusion, the star can shine up to 10 billion years.
Brown dwarf star
The brown dwarf star is the smallest, and it can’t generate energy through nuclear reactions the way the regular stars do. It illuminates mostly in the infrared light and is not as bright as other stars. During its life span, it gradually contracts, produce infrared and becomes dimer and dimer. Also, there is a white dwarf star as well takes several billion years to entirely cool and become a black star.
