What are stars made of?

Stars

Stars are formed from gigantic masses of hot glowing gases.  Hydrogen and helium are the most common gases in a star.  In the clearest night sky you might see a few thousand stars with unaided eye.  Every bright star is a sun, like our own sun.

Scientists tell us that a star is a huge glowing ball of hot gases.  It is a kind of gigantic atomic furnace in which the temperature at the center may be as high as several million degrees.  Hydrogen and helium are the most common gases found in a star.  Although they are made up of gases, their centers are so dense and hot that the atoms of gas are constantly colliding and fusing together into new materials.

As the atoms unite, some of their atomic energy is given off  in the form of heat and light which stream away from the star in all directions.  This is why stars shine.  Scientists can find out all this by using instruments called spectroscopes.  With these instruments they can tell from the light a star gives what the star is made of and how hot it is. – Dick Rogers

What is a shooting star?

Shooting stars are tiny meteors that glow white hot when they hurtle from out of space into the earth’s atmosphere. 

If you look up at the sky long enough on a dark, clear night, you may see the fiery streak of a “shooting star” flash across the sky. 

Shooting Star

While “shooting star” may be a pretty name, it is not accurate, for real stars are great glowing balls of gases far out in space.

The “shooting stars” that streaks across the sky are bits of rock and metal called meteors.  Many billions of meteors zip around through space.

Many of them come so close that they are captured by earth’s gravity, and are pulled toward earth.  As the speeding meteors hurtle into the earth’s atmosphere, friction with the air causes them to glow white hot.  Then we see them as blazing trails of lights.

Meteors rarely blaze for more than a few seconds.  Most of those we see were originally no bigger than a grain of rice.  They usually burn up before they reach the ground.

Meteors that survive their fall and land on earth are called meteorites.-Dick Rogers

Let Your Little Light Shine (2 of 2)

The clues to our “accelerating universe” may just be in the thorough investigation of nearby galaxies, supernovas, and neutron stars down to the minute quark-gluon plasmas and neutrinos. As new technologies are developed to allow scientist to probe deeper into space, new challenges emerge. The new findings may contest the existing theories that have been the bulwark of the physical world and its many phenomena. But still, scientist build upon these little findings to search the skies for even more clues.

Life is like that—a continuing quest for illumination. We sometimes feel that we know so much. Other times, we feel that what we recently learned and discovered have actually unearthed another puzzle, an answer leading to another question. Even so, our little discoveries and experiments help enrich us to become a better person. We can actually use our “little lessons” to encourage others overcome their own challenges.

If travelers and explorers seek for the lighthouse nearby or the brightest stars to guide their path, the “little lessons” to encourage others overcome their own challenges.

If travelers and explorers seek for the lighthouse nearby or the brightest stars to guide their path, the little “lights” that researchers leave behind become the “guiding lights” for new explorations.

When others wallow in shadows, your “little light” may just be the flicker of hope that others need for them to prod on with life. Aren’t you going to let your little light shine and warm others?

And at times when life becomes gloomy, instead of bowing down in grief, try looking up—a beacon of light may just be shining somewhere. – Bato Balani

Let Your Little Light Shine (1 of 2)

Good morning everyone. I use to remember when I was still small, I love to play with my friends and we love to light a candle. We want to light it so that we will have a good light so that we can play well.

“One candle lights one candle, two candles light four . . . And where they shine, there is no darkness anymore.”

When we were little children, we would wish upon the first star we see at dust. We couldn’t help but get awed as tiny flickers in the infinite sky started to inhabit the cloudless dark space above us. As we grew older, we learned more about the celestial bodies residing in the universe—the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars—yet the mysteries of the cosmos continue to baffle us ever to this day.

Even the experts called cosmologists are puzzled not only by the hugeness of the universe but also by the information that may just be lurking in the dark, or even lighted, areas of the immense outer space.

For many years, scientists believe that after the Big Bang, the universe will collapse with a “big crunch” due to the pull of gravity. It’s like pulling a rubber band in all directions, and the rubber band snaps back when the limit has been reached.

Recent scientific fingers, however, suggest that contrary to earlier belief—that the expansion of the universe slows down before it finally collapses—the universe is in fact expanding at a faster rate. In their quest for answers, scientists focused their attention to the stars and their environs.