Supernova

and hold a beautiful mystic to them like a comet streaking across the sky. Of all the magnificence spectacles that occur in the universe, there are not many that equal the power or beauty of a supernova. Supernovas occur at the end of the star’s life cycle as the star depletes its fuel. According to NASA, as the star runs out of fuel, a portion of the stars mass flows towards the core. This causes the core to grow and eventually due to the gravitational forces of the star, collapses the core causing a spectacular explosion. While it is theorized that a supernova occurs once every second in the universe, few can be seen or studied from earth. The first supernova that was seen and was studied extensively was SN1987A.…

The video we watched in lab, “Life and Death of a Star,” gave us incredible information regarding the life cycle of a star. There are billions of stars out there and in our galaxy, we have about four billion. Stars, which are ignited by the power of the atom, burning with light, heat and wrath, stars are anything but peaceful. They collide, devour each other, and explode in enormous supernovas. These “supernovas” are known to be the largest explosion in the universe. Throughout the video, we…

The Life Cycle of Stars The life cycle of a star is an incredible, miraculous phenomenon that begins with just two elements: helium and hydrogen. The result is the all well known star that is seen twinkling in the night sky and also what lights up the day here on Earth. There are hundreds upon thousands of stars that take on many different sizes and colors. Depending on the size of the star from its birth, the star could take two paths at the end of its life: turn into a nebula leaving behind a…

When a star is born it can take one of two paths. It can either take the path of a high mass star or the path of a low mass star. A high mass star will be between 10-50 solar mass and a low mass star will be between .8-10 solar masses. One solar mass is equal to M⊙ = (1.989±0.004) x 1030 kg, which is A LOT. Either path it takes, the one of a high mass or low mass star it will live about 90% of it’s lifetime in its main sequence. Once achieving nuclear fusion the star slowly contracts over…

Jonathan Hatch walked down the tree-lined road from his home in Valdosta, Georgia while his mind ran through his normal checklist creation for the day. One. Write that email to the Dean of Student Affairs about the lack of student involvement in the astronomy club and create a case for funding even though only 4 students attend regularly. Two. Get with Casey, his TA Graduate student. The quizzes from the last Friday need to be graded yesterday and are starting to collect dust. John also needs to…

SUPERGIANT STAR Supergiants are among the most luminous and massive stars, ranging between 7-10 solar masses and can range in brightness from thirty thousand to hundreds of thousands the output of our sun. They reside in the top region of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram; having temperatures from 3,500k to over 20,000k and having bolometric absolute magnitudes between -5 and-12. Supergiants are massive enough to begin burning helium gently in their core before it becomes degenerate, and without…

mass-luminosity relation. The upper right corner of the H-R diagram is occupied by red giants and supergiant stars, which have low surface temperatures and high luminosities. Red giants have masses which are approximately as low as 0.3 to 8 solar masses, a surface temperature of under 6,500 Kelvin and a luminosity on average 14, 000 times greater than the sun’s. Stars from the main sequence enter this evolutionary stellar stage once the solar core has exhausted its supply of hydrogen, hence…

Did you ever think on how the universe ever started ? It all started in total darkness. An astronomer named Edwin Hubble found out that the galaxies were moving farther away, he knew that by a telescope that he created and it is called the hubble telescope. When the universe exploded it began to spread really quickly and when it exploded the universe had a very high temperature when this happened. Which created formation of elements ,gravity,redshift ,doppler effect,CMB, many more . The big…

the star. Low mass stars will become unstable and collapse from their own gravitational forces. They in turn glow very brightly and are so small that they are referred to as White Dwarfs. High mass stars have much more volatile deaths. After the hydrogen is exhausted within their core they use the byproduct of helium as well as Carbon and Oxygen as fuel before eventually succumbing to a lack of fuel, as their cores become Iron. These stars do experience the White Dwarf stage but for a much…

Hypernovas are the deaths of massive stars and the formation of a black hole. They are larger than supernovas and are believed to be the origin of long gamma ray bursts. This violent explosion happens in a matter of seconds, but produces more energy in those seconds than the sun produces in its entire 9 billion year lifespan. Not a lot was known about hypernovas until 2003 when a massive gamma ray burst reached earth. This was identified as a hypernova and photographed. In 1999 remnants of a…