South Oakleigh College ASTROPHYSICS: Star Formation

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Star Formation

Stars are born out of clouds of gas - consisting mainly of Hydrogen atoms. Over millions of years, the gas contracts under the attractive force of gravity and eventually the protons inside the hydrogen atoms get so close to each other that they begin to fuse together. When the protons fuse together they are undergoing a nuclear reaction called nuclear fusion creating helium and giving off light.

Not all of the cloud ends up condensing into a star. Some of the gas can join together to form planets.

Over millions of years, the Hydrogen continues to fuse into helium, as well as Lithium, Berrylium and Boron

giving off light until it runs out. The bigger the star the quicker the process takes place.

Then, as the Hydrogen runs out, the Helium fuses together producing Carbon.
In the largest stars, Carbon can eventually fuse to produce Oxygen, Neon, Sodium and Calcium.

It is in stars that the elements that make up the periodic table are formed.

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AstroPhysics

Astronomy or Astrophysics is the scientific study of stars, planets, comets and galaxies. Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences when people sought to understand the bright lights in the night sky. The invention of the telescope enabled great progress to be made.

The scientific age began when Galileo Galilei , in Florence, Italy built a telescope similar to the design created by Hans Lippershey In 1610 Galileo published his findings that Jupiter had moons. As a result of Galileo's observations he theorised that the Sun is orbited by Earth and the planets. That the moon is not a planet but orbits the Earth. That Jupiter has its own moons. He challenged the belief that the Earth is the center of the Universe with all the planets, the Sun and the Moon and the Stars in orbit around around the Earth.
Galileo also used his telescope to discover that the Milky Way is composed of stars.

Modern telescopes on Earth have discovered a lot of other galaxies other than the Milky Way, during the 20th Century. It was Edwin Hubble who discovered in 1923, that galaxies exist outside of the Milky Way.

In 1990 a telescope, known as the Hubble Space Telescope, was launched into orbit around the Earth, 600km above the Earth and therefore above the Earth's atmosphere. Being above the atmosphere means that the images captured by the telescope are much clearer than are possible on the surface of the Earth, and therefore much more distant objects can be seen and analysed. Check out these sites [ http://hubblesite.org/ and http://hubble.nasa.gov/ ]