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    Text 3 - Stars

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    Jacqueline Gallardo
    Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies and are responsible for the creation of heavy elements. They are born within clouds of dust and gas, where turbulence can cause gravitational collapse to form a protostar at the center. As the cloud continues collapsing, a hot core forms that will become the star. Most stars exist in pairs or groups. During their main sequence phase, stars fuse hydrogen into helium to emit energy for billions of years, existing in a wide range of sizes and temperatures.

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    Text 3 - Stars

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    Jacqueline Gallardo
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    Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies and are responsible for the creation of heavy elements. They are born within clouds of dust and gas, where turbulence can cause gravitational collapse to form a protostar at the center. As the cloud continues collapsing, a hot core forms that will become the star. Most stars exist in pairs or groups. During their main sequence phase, stars fuse hydrogen into helium to emit energy for billions of years, existing in a wide range of sizes and temperatures.

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    Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies and are responsible for the creation of heavy elements. They are born within clouds of dust and gas, where turbulence can cause gravitational collapse to form a protostar at the center. As the cloud continues collapsing, a hot core forms that will become the star. Most stars exist in pairs or groups. During their main sequence phase, stars fuse hydrogen into helium to emit energy for billions of years, existing in a wide range of sizes and temperatures.

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    20 views2 pages

    Text 3 - Stars

    Uploaded by

    Jacqueline Gallardo
    Stars are the fundamental building blocks of galaxies and are responsible for the creation of heavy elements. They are born within clouds of dust and gas, where turbulence can cause gravitational collapse to form a protostar at the center. As the cloud continues collapsing, a hot core forms that will become the star. Most stars exist in pairs or groups. During their main sequence phase, stars fuse hydrogen into helium to emit energy for billions of years, existing in a wide range of sizes and temperatures.

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    Stars

    Stars are the most widely recognized astronomical objects and represent the most
    fundamental building blocks of galaxies. The age, distribution, and composition of
    the stars in a galaxy trace the history, dynamics, and evolution of that galaxy.
    Moreover, stars are responsible for the manufacture and distribution of heavy
    elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and their characteristics are
    intimately tied to the characteristics of the planetary systems that may coalesce
    about them. Consequently, the study of the birth, life, and death of stars is central
    to the field of astronomy.

    Star Formation
    Stars are born within the clouds of dust and scattered throughout most galaxies. A
    familiar example of such as a dust cloud is the Orion Nebula. Turbulence deep
    within these clouds gives rise to knots with sufficient mass that the gas and dust
    can begin to collapse under its own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses,
    the material at the center begins to heat up. Known as a protostar, it is this hot core
    at the heart of the collapsing cloud that will one day become a star. Three-
    dimensional computer models of star formation predict that the spinning clouds of
    collapsing gas and dust may break up into two or three blobs; this would explain
    why the majority the stars in the Milky Way are paired or in groups of multiple stars.

    As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and
    gas. Not all of this material ends up as part of a star — the remaining dust can
    become planets, asteroids, or comets or may remain as dust.

    In some cases, the cloud may not collapse at a steady pace. In January 2004, an
    amateur astronomer, James McNeil, discovered a small nebula that appeared
    unexpectedly near the nebula Messier 78, in the constellation of Orion. When
    observers around the world pointed their instruments at McNeil's Nebula, they
    found something interesting — its brightness appears to vary. Observations with
    NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provided a likely explanation: the interaction
    between the young star's magnetic field and the surrounding gas causes episodic
    increases in brightness.

    Main Sequence Stars


    A star the size of our Sun requires about 50 million years to mature from the
    beginning of the collapse to adulthood. Our Sun will stay in this mature phase (on
    the main sequence as shown in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram) for
    approximately 10 billion years.

    Stars are fueled by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium deep in their
    interiors. The outflow of energy from the central regions of the star provides the
    pressure necessary to keep the star from collapsing under its own weight, and the
    energy by which it shines.

    As shown in the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, Main Sequence stars span a wide


    range of luminosities and colors, and can be classified according to those
    characteristics. The smallest stars, known as red dwarfs, may contain as little as
    10% the mass of the Sun and emit only 0.01% as much energy, glowing feebly at
    temperatures between 3000-4000K. Despite their diminutive nature, red dwarfs are
    by far the most numerous stars in the Universe and have lifespans of tens of
    billions of years.

    On the other hand, the most massive stars, known as hypergiants, may be 100 or
    more times more massive than the Sun, and have surface temperatures of more
    than 30,000 K. Hypergiants emit hundreds of thousands of times more energy than
    the Sun, but have lifetimes of only a few million years. Although extreme stars such
    as these are believed to have been common in the early Universe, today they are
    extremely rare - the entire Milky Way galaxy contains only a handful of hypergiants.

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