Fred Morgan
What Is A Star?
Fun Fact: A star is a big ball of hot, glowing gas. The gas is mostly hydrogen and helium. Stars give off heat, light, and other kinds of energy.
A star has several layers. The part at the center of a star is called its core. A star shines because of its core. The core is so hot and tightly packed that atoms crunch together. Atoms are tiny bits of matter much too small to see. Hydrogen atoms crunch together and become helium atoms. This is called nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion gives off enough energy to make the stars shine.
Fun Fact: The closest star to you on Earth is the Sun.
What Color Are Stars?
Stars come in different colors. They can be deep red, orange, yellow, white, or even blue. The color of a star depends on how hot the star is. The coolest stars are reddish and the hottest stars are bluish.
It is hard to imagine how hot a star can be. The temperature at the surface of red stars is about 3000° Celsius. Yellow stars have surface temperatures about 6000° Celsius. Our Sun is a yellow star. White stars are about 10,000° Celsius!
A star looks as if it is just one color. Starlight, however, is made up of many colors. Light from our Sun has all the colors of the rainbow. Astronomers study the light of other stars. Patterns in the light can tell astronomers what the stars are made of and how hot they are.
How Bright Is A Star?
Some stars in the sky look brighter than others. Some stars really are brighter. Other stars just look brighter because they are closer.
Some stars are not nearly as bright as the Sun. Other stars are as much as 500,000 times brighter.
How Big Is A Star?
Astronomers compare the size of other stars to the size of the Sun. For example, a star called Betelgeuse is about 1,000 times bigger than the Sun.
Where Do Stars Come From?
Stars are born from swirling clouds of gas and dust. Gravity pulls the gas and dust together. The gas and dust form a spinning ball. As it spins, it gets hotter. The gas and dust get tightly packed. Finally, nuclear fusion begins and the star starts to shine.
READ ALSO: What Do You Know About the Moon?
A Star’s Life
There are different stages in a star’s life, just as there are different stages in the lives of people. Right after a star is born it starts to get smaller. After a million years of shrinking, the star enters the main sequence of its life.
After about 10 billion years, the star’s core runs out of fuel. The star grows many times larger than it was during the main sequence. At this stage the star is called a red giant. What happens next depends on the size of the star.
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