Cosma / Communication / Knowledge / Realm / Physical / Universe / Planetary System / Star
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Introduction1
Guide to Stars & Galaxies (Telescope.org)
Dictionary
star : a self-luminous gaseous spheroidal celestial body of great mass which produces energy by means of nuclear fusion reactions — Webster
OneLook, Free Dictionary, Wiktionary
Thesaurus
Roget’s II (Thesaurus.com), Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, Visuwords
Encyclopedia
Star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye from Earth during the night, appearing as a multitude of fixed luminous points in the sky due to their immense distance from Earth. Historically, the most prominent stars were grouped into constellations and asterisms, the brightest of which gained proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. However, most of the stars in the Universe, including all stars outside our galaxy, the Milky Way, are invisible to the naked eye from Earth. Indeed, most are invisible from Earth even through the most powerful telescopes. — Wikipedia
Stars (Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy, Wolfram Research)
David Darling’s Internet Encyclopedia of Science
Encyclopædia Britannica
Portal
Stars Reference (National Geographic)
Star Portal (Wikipedia)
Search
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Innovation
Science
Stellar Astronomy is the study of stars and stellar evolution, and it is fundamental to our understanding of the Universe. The astrophysics of stars has been determined through observation and theoretical understanding; and from computer simulations of the interior. Star formation occurs in dense regions of dust and gas, known as giant molecular clouds. When destabilized, cloud fragments can collapse under the influence of gravity, to form a protostar. A sufficiently dense, and hot, core region will trigger nuclear fusion, thus creating a main-sequence star. — Wikipedia
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Preservation
History
History of Stars (Universe Today)
Quotation
Library
WorldCat, Library of Congress, UPenn Online Books, Open Library
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Participation
Education
Stars & Star Clusters (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)
Stars (Cosmos4Kids)
Course
Crash Course Astronomy (YouTube)
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources
Community
News
Science Daily, Phys.org, NPR Archives
Book
Government
Document
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Expression
Fun
Poem
OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
Music
More News …
Stars News -- ScienceDaily News about Stars. Read science articles and see images on the birth of monstrous stars, brown dwarfs and red giants. Consider stellar evolution and more.
- Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers...on January 26, 2022 at 5:24 pm
A team mapping radio waves in the universe has discovered something unusual that releases a giant burst of energy three times an hour, and it's unlike anything astronomers have seen before. Spinning around in space, the strange object sends out a beam of radiation that crosses our line of sight, and for a minute in every twenty, is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky.
- Extraordinary black hole found in neighboring...on January 24, 2022 at 8:10 pm
At one hundred thousand solar masses, it is smaller than the black holes we have found at the centers of galaxies, but bigger than the black holes that are born when stars explode. This makes it one of the only confirmed intermediate-mass black holes, an object that has long been sought by astronomers.
- Sidewinding young stellar jets spied by Gemini...on January 21, 2022 at 9:55 pm
Sinuous stellar jets meander lazily across a field of stars in new images. The gently curving stellar jets are the outflow from young stars, and astronomers suspect their sidewinding appearances are caused by the gravitational attraction of companion stars. These crystal-clear observations were made using the Gemini South telescope's adaptive optics system, which helps astronomers counteract the blurring effects of atmospheric turbulence.
- Hubble finds a black hole igniting star formation...on January 20, 2022 at 12:41 am
Often portrayed as destructive monsters that hold light captive, black holes take on a less villainous role in the latest research from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A black hole at the heart of the dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10 is creating stars rather than gobbling them up. The black hole is apparently contributing to the firestorm of new star formation taking place in the galaxy. The dwarf galaxy lies 30 million light-years away, in the southern constellation Pyxis.
- How many black holes are out there in the...on January 19, 2022 at 8:52 pm
A new study has investigated stellar mass black holes, which are black holes with masses between a few to some hundred solar masses, that originated at the end of the life of massive stars. According to the study, a remarkable amount of around 1 percent of the overall ordinary matter of the universe is locked up in stellar mass black holes. Astonishingly, the researchers have found that the number of black holes within the observable universe at present time is about about 40 times 10 to the […]
Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine.
- Alpha-rich 'young' stars are actually not youngon January 21, 2022 at 2:59 pm
The alpha-rich giant stars with theoretical young ages have been treated as an abnormal population, since they cannot be understood in the canonical scheme of the Galactic chemical evolution.
- Scientists confirm a highly eccentric black hole...on January 20, 2022 at 7:35 pm
For the first time, scientists believe they have detected a merger of two black holes with eccentric orbits. According to a paper published in Nature Astronomy by researchers from Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation and the University of Florida, this can help explain how some of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration are much heavier than previously thought possible.
- Sidewinding young stellar jets spied by Gemini...on January 20, 2022 at 6:11 pm
Young stellar jets are a common by-product of star formation and are thought to be caused by the interplay between the magnetic fields of rotating young stars and the disks of gas surrounding them. These interactions eject twin torrents of ionized gas in opposite directions, such as those pictured in two images captured by astronomers using the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón on the edge of the Chilean Andes. Gemini South is one half of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of […]
- Capturing all that glitters in galaxies with...on January 20, 2022 at 2:50 pm
Spirals are some of the most captivating shapes in the universe. They appear in intricate seashells, carefully constructed spider webs, and even in the curls of ocean waves. Spirals on cosmic scales—as seen in galaxies—are even more arresting, not only for their beauty, but also for the overwhelming amount of information they contain. How do stars and star clusters form? Until recently, a complete answer used to lie out of reach, blocked by gas and dust. Within the first year of operations, […]
- Hubble finds a black hole igniting star formation...on January 19, 2022 at 8:12 pm
Black holes are often described as the monsters of the universe—tearing apart stars, consuming anything that comes too close, and holding light captive. Detailed evidence from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, however, shows a black hole in a new light: Fostering rather than suppressing star formation. Hubble imaging and spectroscopy of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the black hole to a bright star birth region like an umbilical cord, triggering […]
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Adventures
Explore related posts on Cosma …
- Touch the Sun (12/6/2019) - Remember how Icarus wanted to touch the Sun, but met his demise instead? Well, scientists at NASA wanted to touch the Sun too, but unlike Icarus, they succeeded! Better yet, they are beginning to share what they learned by doing it! Before we get into all of that, let’s go back and start at the … Continue reading Touch the Sun
- Halloween@NASA (10/31/2019) - The folks at NASA love Halloween, and they do something to celebrate every year. For example, the engineers at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab have been holding a pumpkin carving contest for almost a decade, and stories about their ingenuity invariably make it into the news. Here’s a video from Wired about their 2016 competition. Here’s … Continue reading Halloween@NASA
- Get Lost in Space! (9/14/2018) - Way back in August, in anticipation of the start of a new school year, I set out to update the pages on this site related to space. Those pages tend to be popular among the teachers and students who use Cosma, and I happen to enjoy updating them, too. It sounded like a short, fun … Continue reading Get Lost in Space!
- Milky Way Lost & Found (8/15/2018) - Have you seen the Milky Way? You may think that you have, but are you sure? Unless you live in an extremely remote area, or you’ve visited one, then you probably haven’t seen our own galaxy, the Milky Way, very well, or at all. Worse yet, you may not even realize that it’s missing. The … Continue reading Milky Way Lost & Found
- Umbraphiles (8/20/2017) - umbraphile : One who loves eclipses, often travelling to see them. — Wiktionary Yes, this is that obligatory post about “The Solar Eclipse” (NASA, Wikipedia). Of course, there had to be one — eclipses really are just too cool to ignore. You’ve already been bombarded with explanations of the science and history of eclipses, but … Continue reading Umbraphiles
- TRAPPIST-1 (2/23/2017) - You’ve probably heard that NASA has found a trove of “Earth-like” planets circling the TRAPPIST-1 system roughly 40 light years away, but just in case you haven’t, here’s a short 2 minute AP video about the discovery. Here’s another video from NASA/JPL with more explanation. Most entertainingly, here’s a 360° YouTube Video published by NASA/JPL … Continue reading TRAPPIST-1
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Related
Here are links to pages about closely related subjects.
“Fundamentals”
Law (Constant) Relativity
Force Gravity, Electromagnetism (Light, Color)
Matter (Microscope) Molecule, Atom (Periodic Table), Particle
“Space”
Universe (Astronomical Instrument)
Galaxy Milky Way, Andromeda
Planetary System Star, Brown Dwarf, Planet, Moon
Our Neighborhood
Solar System Sun
Terrestrial Planet Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars
Asteroid Belt Ceres, Vesta
Jovian Planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Trans-Neptunian Object
Kuiper Belt Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
Scattered Disc Eris, Sedna, Planet X
Oort Cloud Etc. Scholz’s Star
Small Body Comet, Centaur, Asteroid
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Notes
1. The resources on this page are are organized by a classification scheme developed exclusively for Cosma.