How are Stars Born?

December 20, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

Astronomers-Take-a-First-Glimpse-at-the-Birth-of-a-Triple-Star-System.jpg

Astronomers have discovered that the clouds of gas and dust—the interstellar medium (ISM)—found between the stars are made of the same materials as the stars themselves. In fact, hydrogen is the most common element in both stars and the ISM, followed closely by helium.

But it would be more accurate to say that stars are made of the same material as the ISM, not the other way around.

This is because all of the stars formed out of material in the ISM at some point millions to hundreds of billions of years ago. And when they die, they return that material—what’s left of it—to the ISM.

Specifically, stars form out of the giant molecular clouds (GMCs) of the ISM. But how?

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What is Coronal Gas?

December 16, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 9 Comments

Stars are hot. Space is cold. We’re all familiar with that, right?

Ok, good.

Technically, it’s more complicated than that. Space isn’t completely frigid—absolute zero, the temperature at which there is no heat whatsoever, is purely theoretical and not thought to exist in the universe. But it is pretty darn cold.

And stars aren’t always very hot—there is one newly discovered star that’s only as hot as fresh coffee. (It’s a brown dwarf, and if you go by the definition of a star as an object that’s ignited hydrogen fusion in its core, then it doesn’t actually count.)

In general, though, stars are pretty darn hot. Some special types of stars reach up to 200,000 K—that’s 359,540.33℉. Our own sun is about 5,778 K, which much cooler, but still almost ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

As a rule, we can think of stars as being much hotter than the space in between…except in the case of coronal gas.

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What are Molecular Clouds?

October 2, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 4 Comments

Meet the Pillars of Creation, a photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. These apparent “pillars” of dust and gas are what we call molecular clouds. And this region of clouds in space is aptly named: it’s where stars are created.

Technically, there are two types of molecular clouds—molecular clouds and giant molecular clouds, or GMCs—but I’ll get into that in a second.

Molecular clouds are deep within the interstellar medium. In case you don’t remember the ISM from my “recent” posts (sorry about that), it’s the stuff between the stars. It’s the galaxy’s backstage. Space is in fact not a perfect vacuum—it’s full of the ISM.

So what’s going on with molecular clouds like the Pillars of Creation?

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What is a Nebula?

June 14, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 3 Comments

What’s a nebula?

Well…you’re looking at one.

Okay, okay, I know. You want to know what that actually is. You want to know why it’s there. You want to know why there are colors in space…and why you’ve never noticed such a thing in your own night sky before.

Nebulae are the stuff between the stars. They’re the galaxy’s backstage. They’re the only visible evidence of a vast expanse of gas and dust between the stars, completely invisible to the human eye, called the interstellar medium.

Nebulae are the sites of star birth. Planets form from the dusty particles present in these glowing space clouds. They’re the galaxy’s way of replenishing itself. And they’re pretty cool to look at, too.

But how come they look the way they do?

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