Why are there stars in space?

One of the great pleasures of life is looking out the window at night and being able to see those wonderful points in the sky that are the stars. Since our ancestors we have been drawn to small points of light in the dark. Because of that attraction today in this lesson a PROFESSOR we are going to talk about why are there stars in space so that, thus, you know better the conformation of our universe.

Index

1. What is a star?
2. Why do we see the stars?
3. Types of stars

A starit's a huge mass of hot and glowing gas and that it has a spherical shape. Stars undergo nuclear fusion, thanks to which they emit such powerful illumination that, although it travels enormous distances, we can observe it from Earth.

The nuclear fusion of stars It happens because the lightest elements of these are forced to become an element heavy, the amount of energy that is created from this is what causes them to glow and their high temperatures.

Stars are very complex elements, their formation is basically due to helium and hydrogen, both very light elements. Stars burn hydrogen to form helium, little by little this process changes and later in their lives they create heavier elements. Stars are also made up of heavy elements, such as carbon, iron or oxygen, which are inherited from the stars that existed before them.

When stars die, they throw out many of the aforementioned elements, and this helps new stars to be formed thanks to these recycled elements.

Image: Slideshare

Due to the nuclear mergers of the stars, the light they cause is so strong that we can see them from our planet, although only at night. The stars are in our sky both during the day and at night, but the closest star, the Sun, illuminates our sky so much that it does not let us see the farthest stars. During the night, when the Sun is gone, starlight can be seen.

It depends on where we look at the sky from, we can see a different number of stars, depending on how dark the sky can get. That is why in cities, where artificial light abounds, fewer stars are seen than in other places far from city lights.

The number of stars It can also vary according to the Moon, since the Full Moon illuminates the sky, which causes greater darkness and as a consequence, fewer stars are seen. Another factor to take into account today is the Light pollution, since the day-by-day increase in man-made light sources is affecting the vision of the stars, making it increasingly difficult to see the stars at night.

In this other lesson we discover you how and when the stars formed in the universe so that you know this topic better.

Continuing with this lesson on "why are there stars in space?" we should talk about the different kinds of stars and how this makes the way we see stars from our perspective varies. planet.

There are two factors when it comes to knowing why some stars shine more than others, the first is the distance from the stars, and the second is the class to which the star belongs.

• Distance determines how bright we see the stars. The stars are brighter the closer they are to our position, and when they move away we see them less bright. That is why we see the Sun so bright, as it is the closest star to our position.
• The star classes are determined by the Morgan-Keenan rating scale, classified depending on its size, lighting and temperature. Depending on the temperature at which the stars reach they can also be of different color, being class O, the warmest, of a totally different color from class M, the coldest. Depending on the class they are, we can see them more or less bright on Earth, since the stars of larger size and higher temperature shine more than the others, being the ones that we can more easily watch.

Therefore, the vision we have of the stars are determined both by their class and by their distance. A large, high-temperature, nearby star will be much brighter than the rest.

Image: Starry

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