Omg ;D

It’s easy to forget that thousands of comets, asteroids, and meteors are near us everyday. They seem like such a rarity.

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

Cosmonaut Ivan Vagner obtained this image of the comet NEOWISE a few hours ago from the International Space Station. He says that the dust tail looks very good from there. It is worth enlarging the image.

via reddit

Looks like I’m getting a new wallpaper

It’s so beautiful ;(

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

Sunset in the Kananaskis Valley, Alberta. [2853 x 3566] [oc] - Author: ProjectOxide on reddit

Well TECHNICALLY it’s a helium-4 nucleus

I guess I can see where the confusion comes from

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

first post on Reddit lets go

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE OF A STAR

The yellow dwarf of our Sun is around 4.5 billion years old (NASA).

   This is nothing compared to other stars, the oldest we know of was created 13.2 billion years ago (DISCOVERY OF THE 1523-0901).  Shortly before that, it is theorized the universe was a dense ball of super hot subatomic particles, until it wasn't. 

     For some reason, possibly the amounts of pressure or even the mysterious dark energy, the universe exploded into what it is today, forming crucial atoms and molecules, and continues to expand. These molecules formed clumps and clouds of gas, which eventually collapsed by gravity and created the very first stars. 

    Stars, particularly our Sun, are very important to life and affect the void of space to a great magnitude. They can tell us so much about the early universe, form elements from their deaths, and even create black holes. But how did this come to be?

     By definition, they are "huge celestial bodies made mostly of hydrogen and helium that produce light and heat from the churning nuclear forges inside their cores." (National Geographic) And there are TONS of them. There are stars everywhere we look. In fact, Astrophysicists aren't even sure how many stars there actually ARE in the universe (Space)! That's because they're not sure if the universe is infinite - in which the number of stars would also be infinite. Even so, we may not be able to detect them all, even if the number is finite.

     But they're so much more than a definition or a number. Stars aren't just objects: they're histories. Stars have a life, they are born, fuel themselves on nuclear fusion, and when they can no longer -  there are many ways their deaths can go (in brutal, yet tantalizing ways). They form solar systems, galaxies, galaxy clusters, and might just be the life-blood of the universe. Their light acts as beacons to scientists. Stars are so crucial to us, their deaths through Supernovas form most of the elements on the Periodic Table of the Elements.

    As the brilliant cosmologist, Carl Sagan, once said: "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star-stuff."

    And if we're made of this stuff, shouldn't we at least try to understand what it actually does?

Next - Chapter 2: Classification

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

My favorite YouTube video as of now (I know this doesn’t seem like it’s related to space - but it has a nice discussion about black holes and hawking radiation, which is I love it so much)

Remember kids: be cautious of bouncy castles!

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

Woah :o

That is soooooooo cool!

I don’t do excess research into exoplanets - like I do stars - but wow. Isn’t it just amazing how much information we can get from such a far object??? Science has really come so far, it brings a single tear to my eye ;)

I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more info!

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

YALE’S EXPRES LOOKS TO THE SKIES OF A SCORCHING, DISTANT PLANET

Yale technology is giving astronomers a closer look at the atmosphere of a distant planet where it’s so hot the air contains vaporized metals.

The planet, MASCARA-2 b, is 140 parsecs from Earth – or roughly 2.68 quadrillion miles. It’s a gas giant, like Jupiter. However, its orbit is 100 times closer to its star than Jupiter’s orbit is to our Sun.

The atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b reaches temperatures of more than 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit, putting it on the extreme end of a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. Astronomers are keenly interested in hot Jupiters because their existence had been unknown until 25 years ago and they may offer new information about the formation of planetary systems.

“Hot Jupiters provide the best laboratories for developing analysis techniques that will one day be used to search for biosignatures on potentially habitable worlds,” said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy and co-author of a new study that has been accepted by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Fischer is the guiding force behind the instrument that made the discovery possible: the Extreme PREcision Spectrometer (EXPRES), which was built at Yale and installed on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Ariz.

The primary mission of EXPRES is finding Earth-like planets based on the slight gravitational influence they have on their stars. This precision also comes in handy when looking for atmospheric details of far-away planets, the researchers said.

Here’s how it works.

As MASCARA-2 b crosses the direct line of sight between its host star and Earth, elements in the planet’s atmosphere absorb starlight at specific wavelengths – leaving a chemical fingerprint. EXPRES is able to pick up those fingerprints.

Using EXPRES, Yale astronomers and colleagues from the Geneva Observatory and Bern University in Switzerland, as well as the Technical University of Denmark, found gaseous iron, magnesium, and chromium in MASCARA-2 b’s atmosphere.

“Atmospheric signatures are very faint and difficult to detect,” said co-author Sam Cabot, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale and leader of the study’s data analysis. “Serendipitously, EXPRES offers this capability, since you need very high-fidelity instruments to find planets outside our own solar system.”

The study’s lead author, astronomer Jens Hoeijmakers of the Geneva Observatory, said EXPRES also found evidence of different chemistry between the “morning” and “evening” sides of MASCARA-2 b.

“These chemical detections may not only teach us about the elemental composition of the atmosphere, but also about the efficiency of atmospheric circulation patterns,” Hoeijmakers said.

Along with other advanced spectrometers such as ESPRESSO, built by Swiss astronomers in Chile, EXPRES is expected to collect a wealth of new data that may dramatically advance the search for exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun.

“The detection of vaporized metals in the atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b is one of the first exciting science results to emerge from EXPRES,” Fischer said. “More results are on the way.”

CMB!!!

Aka the cosmic microwave background, which is a huge piece of evidence for the Big Bang Theory of cosmology, a remnant from the early universe.

Also my favorite superhero is Spiderman.

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

I am omnipresent

Best Star Wars movie can’t deny it

Prequels and sequels eat your heart out

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

The Empire Strikes Back opened in theaters on this day in 1980.

THE LIFE OF A STAR: CLASSIFICATION

In order to understand the life of a star, we must understand star classification.

        And there are SO many different ways to classify a star.

        In star classification, understanding the relationship between color and temperature is crucial. The greater the temperature of the star, the bluer they are (at their hottest, around 50,000 degrees Celcius), while red stars are cooler (at their coolest, around 3,000 degrees Celcius). This occurs on a wide range (fun fact: stars only come in red, orange, yellow, white, and blue, because stars are approximately something called a "black body"). For example, our Sun is a yellow star with a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees Celcius (The Life of a Star).

        But why is this so? In order to understand that, I'm going to tell you about how stars live at all. This is what will determine the entire life of a star - something we'll be focusing on throughout this series. Two words: nuclear fusion.

        Nuclear fusion is "a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy." (Wikipedia) And this is where nuclear fusion gets REALLY important to stars. Throughout their lives, stars undergo nuclear fusion in their core. This is mostly in the form of fusing two or more hydrogen atoms into one or more helium atoms. This releases energy in the form of light (the pressure of nuclear fusion in the core also prevents the star from collapsing under the weight of gravity, something we'll get to later). The energy transports to the surface of the star and then radiates at an "effective temperature." (Britannica) 

        Stars are different colors due to differing amounts of energy. This is best explained by Einstein's e=mc2 or the mass-energy equivalence. In other words, the more mass something has, the more energy, and vice versa. Stars with greater mass undergo more nuclear fusion - and as such - emit more energy/temperature. And so, the bigger the star, the greater the temperature, the bluer the star; and the smaller the star, the lower the temperature, the redder the star (Universe Today). Another way to think about this is this: the hotter something is, the shorter frequency of energy it emits. Blue light has a shorter frequency than red light, and so, higher energy/temperature stars are bluer.

        Another important classification of a star is its luminosity (or the brightness, or the magnitude of the star). (The Life of a Star)

        The most famous diagram classifying stars is the Herzsprung Russell Diagram, shown in this article's picture. The x-axis of the diagram shows surface temperature, hottest left, and coolest right. The y-axis shows brightness, brighter higher, and dimmer lower. There are main groups on the diagram. 

        Most stars fall in a long band stretching diagonally, starting in the upper left corner and ending in the right lower corner, this is called the main sequence. The main sequence shows stars which mostly use their life going through nuclear fusion. This process takes up most of a star's life. Most stars which are hotter and more luminous fall in the upper left corner of the main sequence and are blue in color. Most stars that have lower-masses are cooler, and redder falls in the lower right. Yellow stars like our Sun fall in the middle. 

         The group located in the lower-left corner are smaller, fainter, and bluer (hotter) and are called White Dwarfs. These stars are a result of a star like our Sun one day running out of Hydrogen.

          The group located right above the righter's main sequence is larger, cooler, brighter, and a more orange-red or red, are called Red Giants. They are also part of the dying process of a star like our sun. Above them in the upper right corner are Red Super Giants, massive, bright, cooler, and much more luminous. To the left of the Red Super Giants are similar stars which are just hotter and bluer and are called the Blue Super Giants.

        That explains the most famous star classifying diagram. The important thing to remember is the data on the chart is not what a star will be like it's whole life. A star's position on the chart will change like our Sun will one day do.

        In a ThoughtCo. article on the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram, Carolyn Collins Petersen wrote: "One thing to keep in mind is that the H-R diagram is not an evolutionary chart. At its heart, the diagram is simply a chart of stellar characteristics at a given time in their lives (and when we observed them). It can show us what stellar type a star can become, but it doesn't necessarily predict the changes in a star." ( The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram and the Lives of Stars)

        And this will continue to be important in the next chapters. Stars don't just stay in the same position their entire lives: they change in their color, luminosity, and temperature. In this series, we'll be tracking how stars form, live and die - all dependent on these three factors - and nuclear fusion - again - super important :)

Previous -  Chapter 1: An Introduction

Next -  Chapter 3: Star Nurseries

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

Anddddd that’s how the nucleus was formed!

This would’ve been a great way to remember the Rutherford experiment in Chemistry class, lol

I should start studying by meme ...

WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!

‎