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The largest known star (in terms of mass and brightness) is called the Pistol Star. It is believed to be 100 times as massive as our Sun, and 10,000,000 times as bright! In 1990, a star named the Pistol Star was known to lie at the center of the Pistol Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy. In 1995, it was suggested that the Pistol Star was so massive ...
The universe is a huge wide-open space that holds everything from the smallest particle to the biggest galaxy. No one knows just how big the Universe is. Astronomers try to measure it all the time. They use a special instrument called a spectroscope to tell whether an object is moving away from Earth or toward Earth.
A star is a big ball of gas which gives off both heat and light. So where do stars come from? What happens to them as they grow older? A galaxy contains clouds of dust and gas, as well as stars. It is in the clouds of dust and gas that stars are born. As more and more of the gas (which is mostly hydrogen) is pulled together by gravity into a cloud, the cloud starts to spin. The gas atoms start ...
A "falling star" or a "shooting star" has nothing at all to do with a star! These amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up. The short-lived trail of light the burning meteoroid produces is called a meteor.
What is a brown dwarf? In order to understand what is a brown dwarf, we need to understand the difference between a star and a planet. It is not easy to tell a star from a planet when you look up at the night sky with your eyes. However, the two kinds of objects look very different to an astronomer using a telescope or spectroscope.
So it was very early in the time after the Big Bang explosion that stars formed. Observations reveal that tiny clumps of matter formed in the baby universe; to WMAP, these clumps are seen as tiny temperatures differences of less than one-millionth of a degree.
Just How Big is this Place? This activity can be used in conjunction with the StarChild Universe Level 2 information OBJECTIVES: Examine ways of measuring distance. Make inferences regarding space travel. Identify the distance relationship between Earth and other objects in the Universe. Develop formulas and procedures for determining ...
Question: Is my body really made up of star stuff? Answer: Virtually all of the elements we see on the Periodic Table were made at some point during the life and death of a star. Only hydrogen, helium, and lithium were created in a different way, i.e., they were created as a result of the Big Bang explosion. So how does a star make the elements ...
Do stars last forever? No. Stars are born, live, and die. This process is called the "life cycle of a star". Most of the time a star shines, it is in a stage of its life cycle called the main sequence. How long it stays in the main sequence phase depends on how much mass the star has. Very big stars have a lot of mass to use as nuclear fuel to ...
BIG BANG THEORY A theory which states that the Universe began to expand after a super powerful explosion of concentrated matter and energy. BLACK HOLE The leftover core of a super massive star after a supernova.
