
The protostar stage, on the far left of this image, can be some 2000 times larger than our Sun. The red giant stage, on the far right of this image, can be some 100 times larger than the Sun. Credit
How far away is the star in our galaxy that will Hypernova?
How far away is the star in our galaxy that will hypernova? The star in the Carina Nebula, Eta Carinae, is 7500 light-years away.
How many more times brighter are the stars in Pleiades than the sun?
But there was one particularly gorgeous group of stars known to the Ancient Greeks and to us today as the Pleiades, a star cluster formed about 100 million years ago. Each of them is some 40 times brighter than our Sun.
What lies between Mars and Jupiter cosmos?
The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, located roughly between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It contains a great many solid, irregularly shaped bodies, of many sizes, but much smaller than planets, called asteroids or minor planets.
Where are the 7 sisters in the sky?
constellation TaurusThe Pleiades are a group of more than 800 stars located about 410 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
What are the 7 Sisters stars?
The sisters were Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Taygete, Asterope, Celaeno and Merope.
What is beyond Pluto?
What is beyond Pluto? There are at least eight more dwarf planets beyond Pluto and Neptune. They include Eris, a little bigger than Pluto, which has its own small moon. There is Haumea, Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, Varuna, and Makemake.
Is the asteroid belt a destroyed planet?
Occasionally people wonder whether the belt was made up of the remains of a destroyed planet, or a world that didn't quite get started. However, according to NASA, the total mass of the belt is less than the moon, far too small to weigh in as a planet.
Will the asteroid belt become a planet?
First of all, there's not enough total mass in the belt to form a planet. Second, the belt is too close to Jupiter. We haven't counted every tiny asteroid by a long shot, but we can estimate the mass of the belt from the asteroids we see and by monitoring the orbits of both Mars and Earth.
How much brighter is the Sun than the Pleiades?
40 times brighterThe average luminosity of the stars in the Pleiades is 40 times brighter than the Sun. However, Alcyone is the brightest of the Pleiades. This star is 1,000 times more luminous than the Sun.
How many light years away is Pleiades?
444.2 light yearsPleiades / Distance to EarthBut measurements made by the Hubble telescope's Fine Guidance Sensors show that the distance to the Pleiades is about 440 light-years from Earth, essentially the same as past distance estimates and differing from the Hipparcos results by more than 40 light-years.
Where are the stars the brightest?
Quick Answer: The brightest star in the night sky is Sirius [A&B] at magnitude -1.46. It is also called Alpha Canis Majoris, and is commonly known as the Dog Star. It resides in the constellation of Canis Major. Sirius is 8.6 light-years away from us, close enough to be the brightest star in our night skies.
How long will the Pleiades last?
250 million yearsAstronomers estimate that the cluster will survive for about another 250 million years, after which it will disperse due to gravitational interactions with its galactic neighborhood.
What is the spectrum of a star?
The spectrum of a star tells us how hot a star is , and that stars are made of primarily Hydrogen and Helium.
How far away is the star in the Carina Nebula?
The star in the Carina Nebula, Eta Carinae, is 7500 light-years away .
Will Orion catch up to the Pleiades?
Orion will almost catch up to the Pleiades 20 million years from now, but the stars of Orion will go supernova before catching up.
How does the color of a star change over time?
The star's color (a measurement of its surface temperature) and luminosity only change slightly over the course of its Main Sequence lifetime as the rate of nuclear fusion changes as the star slowly converts hydrogen to helium. When the star initially begins fusing hydrogen it is said to be on the Zero Age Main Sequence (ZAMS).
How long will a star stay in the main sequence?
For a star like the Sun, it will only remain in this stage for a few hundred million or a billion years, less than 10% of the Sun's Main Sequence lifetime.
What is the main sequence of evolution of a star?
The most important concept to recall when studying stars is the concept of hydrostatic equilibrium. When nuclear fusion is going on in a star's core, the pressure created by this process pushes outward and balances exactly the inward pull of gravity. The first stage of the evolution of a star is the Main Sequence stage, and this accounts for approximately 80% of the star's total lifetime. During this time, the star is fusing hydrogen in its core. The star's color (a measurement of its surface temperature) and luminosity only change slightly over the course of its Main Sequence lifetime as the rate of nuclear fusion changes as the star slowly converts hydrogen to helium. When the star initially begins fusing hydrogen it is said to be on the Zero Age Main Sequence (ZAMS). Over a star's Main Sequence lifetime, as it fuses hydrogen into helium, its outer envelope will respond to slow internal changes, so its position in the HR diagram is not completely fixed. For example, we expect our Sun to brighten and its color to vary slowly over its roughly 10 billion year lifetime on the Main Sequence. By the end of its Main Sequence lifetime, it will be approximately twice as luminous as it is now!
What happens to the star during the main sequence?
During the Main Sequence phase, core hydrogen fusion creates the pressure (in the form of radiation pressure and thermal pressure) that maintains hydrostatic equilibrium in a star, so you should expect that when a star's core has become filled with helium and inert, the star will fall out of equilibrium. As the total pressure decreases, gravity will once again dominate, causing the star to begin to contract again. You should be able to predict that when a stellar core contracts, its temperature will increase. So the star will continue to generate energy in its core, even when core hydrogen fusion ends, through the gravitational contraction of the core. Although fusion has turned the hydrogen in the core into helium, most of the outer layers of the star are made of hydrogen, including the layer immediately surrounding the core. Thus, when the core reaches a critical density and temperature during its contraction, it can ignite hydrogen fusion in a thin shell outside of the helium core. The helium core will also continue to generate energy by gravitational contraction, too. If you think of the Main Sequence as the “hydrogen core fusion” stage of a star's life, the first stage after the Main Sequence is the hydrogen shell fusion stage. During this stage, the rate of nuclear fusion is much higher than during the Main Sequence stage, so clearly the star cannot stay in this stage as long. For a star like the Sun, it will only remain in this stage for a few hundred million or a billion years, less than 10% of the Sun's Main Sequence lifetime.
What is the main sequence of stars?
In Lesson 5, you learned that the Main Sequence is a sequence in mass. That is, the hottest, brightest stars (O, B type) on the Main Sequence are also the most massive stars. The coolest, faintest (K, M type) stars on the Main Sequence are the least massive. Therefore, just by locating a star's position on the Main Sequence in the HR diagram, we can infer a reasonable estimate for its mass. All stars go through a red giant phase and wind up in the same general location in the HR diagram. Thus, we cannot infer the mass of a red giant star simply based on its location in the HR diagram. The track presented above is appropriate for Sun-like stars, but for more massive stars, their evolution proceeds a bit differently. After the red giant phase, the evolution of stars depends much more strongly on their initial mass, so we will have to consider stars of different masses separately from here on out. We will finish our discussion of Sun-like stars before we move into a discussion of more massive stars, like Betelgeuse.
How many radii does a red giant star have?
When a star has reached the tip of the red giant branch (the highest point in luminosity on the track above), it has a radius of approximately 100 solar radii. There are several well known red giant stars even larger than this, which have radii of several hundred solar radii.
What happens to the outer layers of a star?
While these internal changes are occurring in the star, its outer layers are also undergoing changes. The energy being generated in the core will be more intense than during the core hydrogen fusion (Main Sequence) phase, so the outer layers of the star will experience a larger pressure.
How do stars form?
Stars form in huge clouds of gas and dust. Gravity causes the clouds to contract, drawing the gas closer and, as these materials accumulate in the centre, density rises and pressure increases. This then causes the matter to heat up and glow while the mass increases.
How are stars classified?
They can also be classified by their spectra (the elements they absorb) and their brightness.
What type of dwarfs don't emit light?
Brown dwarfs range between spectral types M, L, T and Y and don’t emit visible light. A Brown dwarf usually fills the gap between the most massive gas planets and the least massive stars.
Why does a white dwarf shine?
The reason a white dwarf shines is because it was a hot star once, but there’s no fusion reactions happening anymore. They normally have temperatures of between 8,000 to 40,000 K, and luminosities around 0.0001 to 100 times that of the Sun. They have a mass of about 0.1 to 1.4 times that of our Sun.
What type of star is a red giant?
Red giant stars are of the spectral types M and K and are much smaller than red supergiants and much less massive. When a star has consumed its stock of hydrogen in its core, fusion stops and the star no longer generates an outward pressure to counteract the inward pressure pulling it together.
What type of star is a yellow dwarf?
Yellow dwarfs are of the spectral type G and have a mass between 0.7 and 1 times the mass of the Sun. Around 10% of stars in the Milky Way are yellow dwarfs.
What are stars made of?
Stars are astronomical objects that consist of plasma held together by their own gravity. Their huge celestial bodies are made mostly of hydrogen and helium that produce light and heat from the churning nuclear forges inside their cores.
What type of star is the Sun?
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star that comprises about 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. The Sun has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. The Sun is a Population I, or heavy-element-rich, star. The formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from one or more nearby supernovae. This is suggested by a high abundance of heavy elements in the Solar System, such as gold and uranium, relative to the abundances of these elements in so-called Population II, heavy-element-poor, stars. The heavy elements could most plausibly have been produced by endothermic nuclear reactions during a supernova, or by transmutation through neutron absorption within a massive second-generation star.
How long is the Sun's rotational period?
In a frame of reference defined by the stars, the rotational period is approximately 25.6 days at the equator and 33.5 days at the poles.
How much hydrogen is in the Sun's core?
The Sun's core fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result. This energy, which can take between 10,000 and 170,000 years to escape the core, is the source of the Sun's light and heat.
How much of the Sun's mass is hydrogen?
Its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth; it accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Roughly three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
What is the Sun's energy?
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy mainly as visible light and infrared radiation. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometres (864,000 miles), or 109 times that of Earth. Its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth; it accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Roughly three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen (~73%); the rest is mostly helium (~25%), with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
Where is the Trundholm Sun Chariot?
The sculpture is probably c. 1350 BC. It is displayed at the National Museum of Denmark.
Where is the Sun in the Milky Way?
The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, and it is presently moving in the direction of the constellation of Cygnus. A simple model of the motion of a star in the galaxy gives the galactic coordinates X, Y, and Z as:
What was the first star made of?
The first ever stars, made from pure hydrogen and helium are Population III. These exploded as supernovae, producing fusing the lighter elements into heavier and heavier elements. Our Sun, then, contains the metal from previous generations of stars that went supernova.
How long has the Sun been around?
Our Sun is right in the middle ages, in a time known as the main sequence. It has already lived for 4.3 billion years, and will likely last another 7 billion years or so. At that point, it will balloon into a red giant star, and eventually collapse down into a white dwarf.
What is the name of the star that is yellow?
According to their system of classification, the Sun is known as a yellow dwarf star.
Why is the Sun yellow?
For the quick answer, the Sun is a Population I yellow dwarf star, in the main sequence. Why is the Sun yellow? It’s actually because of the Earth’s atmosphere. If you saw it from space, it would actually look white.
How long do G V stars last?
They generally last for 10 billion years. But there’s more to this question, because G V Stars can experience several different stages. Some are newly forming, others are in their middle ages, and others are nearing the end of their lives. Our Sun is right in the middle ages, in a time known as the main sequence.
Is the Sun a G V star?
So the Sun is at the higher end of this group. The official designation is as a G V star. Stars in the this classification have a surface temperature between 5,300 and 6,000 K, and fuse hydrogen into helium to generate their light. They generally last for 10 billion years.
