Physics of Stars

Stars are phenomenal glowing spheres that everyone has noticed in the night sky. Long ago they were poorly understood. Today, with the help from astronomers, physicists, and other space scientists, we have discovered a large amount of information about stars.

These huge balls of flaming gas have many different ranges of characteristics. We can observe the many fascinating colors that may be displayed from stars. Some of them are not stars themselves, but the trillions of fragments left behind after they explode into supernova (Moreau, 2000).

There is a huge variation in sizes of stars as well. They range from super giants to small dwarfs. Most often their sizes correlate to their age or the particular cycle they are beginning to progress into. For example, a star that is much older may be progressing into the stage before it undergoes supernova. Before it becomes a supernova it greatly expands. However, some stars are naturally very massive. We can see from the below pictures the huge ranges of stars. Both pictures depict how miniscule our own sun is compared to some of these giants.

Hydrogen is the primary substance that makes up the stars throughout the universe. Most stars, however, are made up of 70% hydrogen and 28% helium. Most of us know that hydrogen is an explosive gas if ignited on earth. Similarly, stars are replicas of giant power plants that constantly use hydrogen to fuel themselves emitting enormous amounts of energy (Lochner, 1996).

Stars generate huge quantities of energy which is directly related to its composition. The process of how stars produce this energy is called fusion. What is actually occurring is that hydrogen is being converted to helium while powering the star in the process. What happen...

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