Fascinating Facts About Stars

Fascinating Facts About Stars (Interestingawesome.blogspot.com)

All the hydrogen and helium in the universe was formed in the first few minutes of the Big Bang. The other elements, ranging from beryllium to iron, were the products of nuclear reactions in stars. Some of the stars exploded as supernovae, and these extreme bursts of energy led to the formation of the heavier elements (iron to uranium).And these elements spread across the universe, finally finding their way to our bodies. So all of you the whole of the Solar System for that matter was formed billions of years ago in stars. Aren’t that humbling! You are made from the ashes of a burnt out star.

You are always wondering about space, aren’t you? Then what do you think about stars? Yes, Stars are awesome, cool, weird and sometimes very dangerous. So enjoy these awesome star facts. Learn how stars are formed, what are  the various types of stars, how many stars are there? Why they have different colors? and much more. For the 2nd part of this list,(Fascinating Facts About Stars List 2) click HERE.

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1. A star is a massive ball of plasma (very hot gas) held together by gravity.
   
2. It radiates energy because of the nuclear reactions inside it. It radiates heat and light , and every other part of the electromagnetic spectrum , such as radio waves, micro-waves , X-rays , gamma-rays and ultra-violet radiation.
3. The energy of stars comes from nuclear fusion . This is a process that turns a light chemical element into another heavier element. Stars are mostly made of hydrogen and helium. They turn the hydrogen into helium by fusion.
4. When a star is near the end of its life, it begins to change the helium into other heavier chemical elements , like carbon and oxygen . Fusion produces a lot of energy. The energy makes the star very hot. The energy produced by stars radiates away from them. The energy leaves as electromagnetic radiation .
5. There are approximately 200-400 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy alone.
6. A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material made mostly of hydrogen , with helium and tiny amounts of heavier elements. Once the stellar core is dense enough, some of the hydrogen is changed into helium through nuclear fusion .The energy moves away from the core by a combination of radiation and convection. The star's radiation stops it from collapsing further under its own gravity. Once the hydrogen fuel at the core has been used up, those stars with at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun expand to become a red giant .
   
7.  In some cases they fuse heavier elements . When the star is very old it might expand until its outer layers are pushed away. If the star is heavier, it might explode and spread most of its mass into space.
8. The matter it spreads into space may make a new generation of stars.  If the star is even larger it may collapse and form a black hole .
9. According to a recent report, almost all the gold in the universe was formed when two neutron stars collided.
10. The first stars in the universe were immense behemoths. Some of them were 1000 solar masses which easily dwarfs whatever the current universe can come up with (300 solar masses for a star in the LMC). The first stars were able to grow so large because they were almost pure hydrogen with a little helium and Lithium thrown in.
11. This low metallicity (in astronomy, any element apart from H, He and Li are considered metals) allowed these stars to grow to enormous sizes. But the downside was that these stars were extremely shortlived (a few million years at the most).
12. They died in spectacular hypernovas which would have been an awesome thing to witness if we could manage to travel back in time and shield ourselves from the deadly Gamma ray bursts that would've accompanied these explosions.
    
13. These first stars were responsible for nucleosynthesis, the creation of elements further up the periodic table, using H and He as a base. Celestial alchemy, if you will. These explosions also enriched the surrounding interstellar medium with H and other elements allowing the next generation of stars to be born.
14. Today the universe is filled with stars in every shape and size, colour and density (but there' no racism in stars), and are the defining features of this universe.
15. The event which you have seen occuring with the star has happened a lot time back because stars are too away from the earth. So when the light reaches here, we see that all at false time.
16. Stars after their death transform into black holes. In layman language, When the star dies, it's size keeps on decreasing but the mass remains same and hence it's density increases. This event occur upto that extent that density increases a lot and hence the thing with lesser size and higher mass will exhibit a great gravity, and hence black hole is formed.
17. Stars are not always single but they come in binaries trinaries and even quadruples. They rotate each other on a common center of gravity.
18. Some of them are red, blue due to temperature difference
19. Some are variables. the light varies as the fusion reaction rate goes up or down.
20. The nearest star to our Solar System, and the second nearest star to Earth after the Sun, is Proxima Centauri . It is 39.9 trillion kilometres away. This is 4.2 light years away, meaning that light from Proxima Centauri takes 4.2 years to reach Earth.Using the newest, fastest space probe propulsion systems would still take a craft about 75,000 years to get there.
    
21. Astronomers think there are a very large number of stars in the Universe . They estimate (guess) that there are at least 70 sextillion stars. That is 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000; which is about 230 billion times the number of stars in the Milky Way (our galaxy ).
22. Most stars are very old. They are usually thought to be between 1 and 10 billion years old. The oldest stars are thought to be around 13.7 billion years old. Scientists think that is close to the age of the Universe.
23. Stars vary greatly in size. The smallest neutron stars (which are actually dead stars) are no bigger than a city. The neutron star is incredibly dense. If you were to take a layer a micrometre thick and apply it onto a tank, it would be a very tough armor. The tank would be so heavy, it would sink into the center of the Earth.
24. Hypergiant stars are the largest stars in the Universe. They have a diameter over 1,500 times bigger than the Sun. If you changed the sun into one of these huge stars down where the sun is, its outer surface would reach beyond the orbit of Jupiter , and the earth would be well inside the star. The star Betelgeuse , in the Orion constellation is a red super giant star. You can understand it(Hyper Giant Star) from below image.
    
25. When seen in the night sky without a telescope, some stars appear brighter than other stars. This difference is measured in terms of apparent magnitude . A star's true luminosity is its absolute magnitude . Below is a Super giant star(For comparison purpose only).

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We will update this post with “Fascinating facts about starsPart 2”. So stay tuned with us for the more cool stuffs about universe and cosmos. So what do you think about Stars? Do you want to add some more interesting facts about stars? So don’t wait, hit the comments and join the discussion.

Glad to see you here. Keep checking Interestingawesome.blogspot.com for more amazing facts .Don't forget to share this knowledge  about stars with your friends in your network .Thanks for reading..!!

Astronomy Cosmos Space Stars Universe 4:44:00 AM