Philosophy

Stars are massive gaseous bodies in outer space which generate energy by nuclear fusion and emit light. The effect of Earth's atmosphere causes stars to appear to twinkle. The Sun is the only star close enough to Earth to appear spherical and to provide daylight. The sun provides energy for photosynthetic processes by producers, which are the foundation of the pyramid of food energy in biology.

There are 70 sextillion (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars in the observable universe based on galaxycounts and star estimates. The galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, contains 300 billion stars, 1/230,000,000,000 of the stars in the observable universe.

Star types include
Brown dwarfs

Red dwarfs

Mid-sized stars


White Dwarfs

Black dwarfs

Neutron stars


Red supergiants are supergiant stars of the spectral type M.
The orange-red Betelgeuse, a red supergiant with a surface temperature of 3,600 Kelvin, has a diameter of 1,448,409,600 miles.

Blue supergiants are supergiant stars belonging to the spectral type O. These rare, bright, and extremely massive and short-lived stars can only be found in young cosmicm structures like open clusters, spiral arms, and in irregular galaxies. They are not observed in such old cosmic structures as spiral galaxy cores, elliptical galaxies, or globular clusters.
Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, is more than 20 times massive than the Sun and emits more light than 60,000 suns combined.

Stellar Evolution:
Starting out as a giant molecular cloud, the mass then becomes a protostar as it forms into a spherical rotating object. Brown dwarfs are small protostars that never reach temperatures high enough for the process of nuclear fusion to start. ......... If a mid-sized star is not massive, it will become ____. A star with high mass __________. If the star has is supermassive, it will explode in a supernova or even hypernova after _______ years. The supernova may become a neutron star, or may even result in a black hole . It is not known for sure whether stars may skip the supernova stage to become a black hole, or if there are supernovae which then form black holes.

posted by A Sinner  # 4:14 PM