stellar evolution
Early Stars Were Whirling Dervishes
[/caption] Even though some of the first stars in the early universe were massive, they probably lived fast and furious…
Another Ceasing Cepheid
[/caption] Earlier this year, I wrote an article about a Cepheid variable star named V19 in M31. This Cepheid was…
M33’s “Object-X”
Often times, objects that are unremarkable in one portion of the spectra, can often be vivid in others. In M33,…
Darwin vs. the Sun
[/caption]Today, we take it for granted that the Sun produces energy via nuclear fusion. However, this realization only came about…
Longstanding Cepheid Mass Mystery Finally Solved
[/caption] Cepheid variable stars - a class of stars that vary in brightness over time - have long been used…
ω Centauri’s Red Giants Confirm Stellar Evolution Models
[/caption] While science education often focuses on teaching the scientific method (or at least tries to), the real process of…
Poor in one, Rich in another
[/caption]Just over three years ago, I wrote a blog post commemorating the 50th anniversary of one of the most notable…
Main Sequence
If you make a plot of the brightness of a few thousand stars near us, against their color (or surface…
Nucleosynthesis
'Nucleo-' means 'to do with nuclei'; 'synthesis' means 'to make', so nucleosynthesis is the creation of (new) atomic nuclei. In…
Spitzer Peers Into the Small Magellanic Cloud
This week at the AAC Conference, astronomers released a new image of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC, a dwarf galaxy…