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Articles on Stars

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Stars come into existence because of a powerful force of nature called gravity. ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Curious Kids: how are stars made?

Stars begin their life inside very large, fluffy clouds of space dust and gas called nebulae.
The Milky Way: a pattern of stars, or a pattern of gaps? Luke Busellato/Wikimedia Commons

Why do different cultures see such similar meanings in the constellations?

Around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.
Another reason you don’t want to get too close to a black hole is because of something we call ‘spaghettification’. If this happened to Earth it would be… unpleasant. Shutterstock

Curious Kids: can Earth be affected by a black hole in the future?

If you got too close to a black hole, it would suck you in and you’d never be able to escape, even if you were travelling at the speed of light. This point of no return is called the event horizon.
When it was young, the Sun spun fast – very fast. It would do one rotation in a just one or two Earth days. www.pixabay.com

Curious Kids: does the Sun spin as well as the planets?

Yes, the Sun absolutely spins. In fact, everything in the universe spins. Some things spin faster than the Sun, some are slower and some things spin ‘backwards’.
Searching for planets around nearby stars is like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks. Trevor Dobson/Flikr

How we found a white dwarf – a stellar corpse – by accident

Science is full of surprises. While searching for planets orbiting nearby stars, researchers stumbled across the remains of a star that once outshone the Sun.
Make a wish! Shuttershock

Curious Kids: what makes a shooting star fall?

Shooting stars are not stars at all. They are tiny space adventurers who accidentally wander into our sky and get sucked toward us by Earth’s gravity. Here’s the story of a shooting star’s journey.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter. NASA/CXC/U.Texas

Curious Kids: If a star explodes, will it destroy Earth?

Are there stars other than the Sun that might explode soon close to us? Yes, there are! As long as by ‘soon’ we mean within a million years.
The Sun is a star – but it’s not the only one. NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?

There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
The other galaxies are there, but they are hiding a very long way away. www.shutterstock.com

Curious Kids: Where are all the other galaxies hidden?

We are in the Milky Way. If you travelled on an extremely fast spaceship for more than two million years, you would reach our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. All other galaxies are even further away.

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