What are Stars?
- Born within the clouds of dust and scattered throughout galaxies.
- Most widely recognized astronomical objects.
- Represent the fundamental building blocks of galaxies.
- Responsible for the manufacture and distribution of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.
- Fueled by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to form helium within them.
- Central to the field of astronomy.
- The smallest stars are known as red dwarfs while the massive stars are known as hypergiants.
Orion Nebula
- Also known as Messier 42.
- 1,500 light-years away.
- The closest large star-forming region to Earth.
- Turbulence within the dust clouds forms knots with enough mass that the gas and dust collapse resulting in the material at the center to heat up.
- Protostar is the hot core that will one day become a star.
- Any remaining material may become planets, asteroids, comets, or remain as dust.
Main Sequence Stars
- Span a wide range of luminosities and colors on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram.
- The Sun is a yellow dwarf star. It requires about 50 million years to mature and will stay in the maturity phase for approximately 10 billion years.
White Dwarfs
- Hot stellar cinder left from average stars ejecting their outer layers and exposing the stellar core.
- About the size of the Earth.
- The bigger the core, the denser the white dwarf.
- They lack a source of energy production and fade away when they cool down.
- If formed in a binary or multiple star system, they may become novae.
Supernova
- Star’s core collapses and explodes.
- Releases a huge amount of energy and may outshine an entire galaxy.
- An explosion occurs once every hundred years in the typical galaxy.
- Produces a neutron star when the stellar core contains between 1.4 and 3 solar masses.
Black Holes
- Formed when the collapsed stellar core is larger than three solar masses.
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