Binary star

Evidence shows that there may be a small planet, Proxima b, orbiting Proxima Centauri, the Sun’s closest stellar planet and a frequently studied low-mass star. Even though discrepancies may occur in research, the big picture entails that with strict evidence and consistency, we can prove candidate planets and other features. We must have data from many sources that can prove each other consistent in order to make a conclusion on the basis of planets outside of our reach. Proxima b’s key features include a mass of about 1.3 Earth masses, 11.2 day period, and an equilibrium temperature that allows water to be liquid on its surface. Data for this study comes from two radial velocity tools, High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES); both instruments come from European Southern Observatory (ESO). According to the article Planet Candidate Orbit[s]…

released is equal to what would take the Sun nearly ten-billion years to produce. There is no other process in the universe able to produce this much energy (Bhat, 2011). Additionally, if a GRB was able to distribute itself in all directions equally, such as the way a star does, its luminosity would be that of the combined brightness of a million galaxies such as our Milky Way, albeit briefly (Bennett et al.,…

The most famous celestial bond, except for the rings of Saturn, is the Ring Nebula or also known as M57. The Ring Nebula is 2,000 light years away and as seen on Earth the nebula looks like a donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a football shaped cloud of glowing gas. It’s about one light year across and the glowing light the Ring Nebula produces is not coming from the planets but rather from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas forming intense ultraviolent light. As seen…

Stars that are formed with different masses are thought to have different properties, such as low mass stars are more likely to turn into dwarf planets and high mass stars are more likely to turn into supernovas. Average stars like the sun usually become white dwarfs and the process of emitting its outer layers carry on until the stellar core is revealed which is known as a white dwarf. White dwarfs have the mass of a star but are the size of our planet which arose various questions along the…

Nuclear Fusion and the Remains of a Dead Star Throughout the history of Earth, multicellular organisms rely on one thing, the sun. And throughout the observable universe, there are million of stars out there just like our sun. These stars could be different however, with either more mass, volume, heat, etc. In our high school career, we learn a lot about astronomy, such as the order of the planets in our solar system. We also learn about gravity, rotation of planets, and how long it takes…

The star outside your spaceship's windshield is a spectacular sight. HR 5171 A is a fireball 1,300 times larger than the Earth's sun. It's so big that if it were in our sun's position, it would swallow up Earth beneath its 10,000°F surface. To look at it from your spaceship, you have to wear special goggles--this star is almost a million times brighter than our sun. As you watch HR 5171A burn, you notice something strange. An object is peeking over the horizon, growing larger and larger. It's…

Theory on Lithium in Stars May Be Confirmed The light chemical element lithium is one of the few elements that is predicted to have been created by the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. But understanding the amounts of lithium observed in stars around us today in the Universe has given astronomers headaches. Most heavy elements are produced during supernovae, as massive stars explode in their death throes. However, these events were believed to be too rare to produce the vast amount of…

it was the first nebula to be studied spectroscopically by the astronomer William Huggins in 1864; this study revealed the distinctions between PNe and the other gaseous nebulae. When Huggins studied the spectrum of NGC-6543, he found that the spectrum is dominated by discontinuous lines, emission spectrum, rather than continuous like in the stellar spectrum. The first identified line was the hydrogen Balmer line (H). This discontinuous spectrum confirms Herschel’s idea that the PN gets its…

the gravitational pressure pulling it together The star would collapse down to a more compact object, like a neutron star or a black hole.. White dwarves are very dense, their average density being about one million times denser than that of the sun. A single sugar cubed amount of white dwarf would weigh approximately one tonne. Its volume comparable to that of the earth, and it’s mass comparable that of the sun. A white dwarf has a faint luminosity which comes from the emission of stored…

Over the time thousands of bloody wars fought for the sakes of land, money, and goods. Debatably, the most brutal wars have been fought for something much less materialistic: equality. Although most American citizens are lucky enough to live in a country striving toward equality more than ever before, equal opportunity is still far from being something felt by all. In modern America, people claim that women in the workforce are the ones who are stuck suffering from inside the confines of…