Categories: Astronomy

Stars

Stars…you see thousands of them every time you look into the night sky. Well, that is if you bother to even notice the. They are sort of like trees, or houses; they are there every time you look, so most people take their presence for granted and never give them a second thought. To help you understand what you are looking at in the sky, here are a few fun facts about stars followed by a long list of links to articles about them.

When you look into the night sky, all of the stars appear to be white, but they are not. Stars come in many colors: blue, brown, yellow, red, and orange to name a few. Within each of those colors there are several subcategories like giant and dwarf and a few ways to classify the age of a star.

Stars create energy in one of two ways. The first is converting hydrogen to helium in a proton-proton chain reaction basis(P-P) or the CNO cycle where they convert carbon to nitrogen to oxygen to convert hydrogen to helium(CNO cycle).

Our Sun is a single star. It stands alone near the barycenter of our Solar System. That gives some people the impression that this is how things are every where in the universe, but many stars occur in groups. There are many binary(two) star systems and some known to have as many as 6 in a system.

In the links below you will find thousands of facts about stars. Mixed in with the facts are images and a few other things. Enjoy your reading.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

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