Star Astronomy

« « Current Happenings In Astronomy - An Introduction | Become An Amateur Astronomer By Learning About Star Astronomy » »

Sunday, September 20th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Astronomy in general is a huge subject, as vast as the universe it describes. Star astronomy is just one part of the overall science and hobby. There are ample phenomenon and objects in just our own solar system to keep someone bust for an entire life time. Some people, then, decide to become experts on the stars.

Star astronomy begins about 94 million miles from Earth, with our own sun. It generates an amazing amount of heat to reach all that distance. Our own sun contains just over 98% of the total mass in the solar system. That takes into account everything, the rocks, material, even the very large Jupiter and Saturn in all their moons. It would take 109 Earths to span the sun’s disk, and over 1.3 million Earths would fit within the sun. The heat is generated from a nuclear reaction in the sun’s core where the pressure is 340 billion times the pressure on Earth and temperatures reach 27,000,000F. Try that for a grill, George Foreman.

Since it’s so close to Earth, relatively compared to other suns, the Sun is the most thoroughly studied star. It’s about 250,000 times closer to Earth than the next known star. But the interesting part of stars astronomy is there’s so much to work with beyond our own solar system. A human can see about 5000 stars, all in our own Milky Way galaxy, from Earth. Using telescope, a person can see far more of the 1×10^22 stars estimated in the universe. By the way, that’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. Even a small amateur telescope brings hundreds of thousands of stars to a person’s view. That is amazing! Professionals using larger telescopes can see other galaxies that contain over 200 billion stars. It’s a project of generations just to count each one.

Scientists now know, through star astronomy, that many stars and planets orbiting them. Stars wobble when planets orbit them, and that wobbling can be measured. And in late 2008 astronomers finally took the first pictures of planets orbiting other stars, and even of entire solar systems. Maybe one of those planets contains intelligent life.

Is an intergalactic war in our near future? Not likely. But star astronomy and its study of our own Sun and all the stars in the universe will continue. Maybe someone on one of those other planets is watching us!

Get Social, Bookmark Us!!:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.