Sunday, July 31, 2016

Amazing Facts About *STARS*


  • The Sun is the closest star. Located a mere 150 million km away from earth.
  • Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than our sun. that is the reason you can see them.
  • There are many, many stars, appox. 400 billion stars in our galaxy and there could be as many as 500 billion galaxies in the Universe, and each of which could have as many or more stars as our galaxy.
  • They are very far from us. If you tried to hitch a ride on the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth, it would still take you more than 70,000 years to get there from earth.
  • They are very massive. Some stars that are 100 times more massive than our Sun. These stars also can output about a million times more energy than our sun, while still maintaining the same radius.
  • Eta Carinae is one of the largest stars in the known galaxy, it is designated as a hyper-giant.
  • Another hyper-giant star is designated as Pistol, it shines even brighter than Eta Carinae, at about 10 billion times more than our sun. It emits such high amounts of radiation that scientists have already declared it impossible for anything to live in such a system.
  • The color of a star can tell an observer a lot of things, as the color of a star can show give an idea of how much mass it has, luminosity and other interesting data.
  • The coolest stars in the universe are red, and they sit at around 3,500 kelvin (a special temperature measurement used for stars).
  • Opposite to that, the hottest stars are blue due to their incredible mass and the amount of chemical reactions occurring within them. They burn at around 6,000 kelvin.
  • The stars that have the shortest life spans are the most massive. They lend their mass to a high density of chemicals; as such they burn their fuel much quicker than smaller stars.
  • Stars don’t twinkle (twinkle-twinkle little star is not twinkling and not little also). As the light from a star passes through the atmosphere, especially when the star appears near the horizon, it must pass through many layers of often rapidly differing density. This has the effect of deflecting the light slightly as it were a ball in a pinball machine. The light eventually gets to your eyes, but every deflection causes it to change slightly in color and intensity. The result is “twinkling.” Above the Earth’s atmosphere, stars do not twinkle.


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