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THE STARS ABOVE US
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To the professional astronomer, the stars are part of a huge natural laboratory - one of enormous extremes. While an atomic physicist can test the behavior of matter in a particle accelerator on Earth, an astrophysicist has access to the far more energetic conditions in the heart of a distant star, or close to a black hole. Light-years away in the cosmos, the stars provide a test bed for theories about the behavior of matter that we cannot come close to on Earth. And they are much more besides. In a sense, the stars are alive: They are born, they live, and they die. Our local star, the Sun, is no exception. It is halfway through its 10-billion-year life span, and it too will die - and with it, the Earth. But a star is a phoenix. From its ashes rises the next generation of stars and planets - and even life itself.
Take a look below to find out all kinds of information on everything from measuring stars and life cycles to individual star types including mysterious black holes that form after a massive explosion of a supergiant as it dies...
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WHAT'S INSIDE
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Measuring Stars and Life Cycle |
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Come here to check out how the Parallax Method and the Inverse Square Law work in measuring how far away distant stars are! Also find out about the magnitude scale and spectral type. Click here to find out all about stellar evolution, including: birth, the main sequence, and death.
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Variable Stars |
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Learn all about cataclysmic, eruptive, pulsating, elipsing, and rotating variable stars in this section!
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Binary Stars |
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Come to this section and find out about star systems that involve two stars orbiting each other! This section includes: binary pulsars, interacting binaries, and X-Ray binaries.
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Black Holes |
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Click here to find out about the most bizarre objects in the universe! Also find in this section info on supermassive black holes and mini black holes.
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Pulsars |
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Find out about these former neutron stars that became spinning and stars sending out rhythmic bursts of radio waves. The fastest pulsar sends out a pulse 642 times a second!!!
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White & Brown Dwarfs |
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Click here to learn about the center of every planetary nebula that is a million times more dense than water!
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Red Giants |
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Find out all kinds of info about these enormous gas giants including statistics on even bigger objects: Supergiants!
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Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids |
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Click here to learn about the the most famous comets including: Halley's Comet and Hale-Bopp. Also learn about the differences between Meteors, Asteroids, and Comets in this section!
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Nebulae |
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Learn all about the beautiful after-effects of the death of a red giant.
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Neutron Star and Supernovas |
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Come inside this section to learn how the most massive stars end their lives in a colossal explosion. These explosions can even outshine an entire galaxy for a few days! This section also focuses on the super-dense center of supernovas. A pinhead of neutron star material weighs twice as much as the world's biggest supertanker!
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STARS
