Transcript Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”

“Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
http://www.writedesignonline.com/
The Life Cycle of a Star:
Nursery to Neverland
Courtney Mutschler
Geospace 355
Our Sun is
a Star!
www.sec.noaa.gov/primer/primer.html
How I Wonder What You Are…
• Space acts as a nursery full of the stuff
needed to give birth to stars..
– Gas
– Dust
The Space Nursery provides both these materials in
the clouds in the atmosphere of space!
Birth : Protostar
Stars are born when
gravity pulls in the
gas and dust in my
Solar Nursery and
begins to Shine!
When the cool masses of
dust and gas combine,
a star has a
temperature of
1,800,000 degrees F!
http://www.virginmedia.com/images/
Way Above the World So High…
• The Life Span of a star depends on the type
of star it is:
– Giant blue Stars = 1 to 100 million years
– Yellow Star (the Sun) = 10 billion years
– Red dwarf Stars = 100 billion – 1 trillion years
Like a Diamond in the Sky…
Giant Red Star
During the stars “old age,”
the star swells into a giant
red star as its hydrogen
fuses into helium and
burns other fuels.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Betelgeuse_star_(Hubble).jpg
RIP Little Twinkle…
A star has 3 types
of death’s it could
face, depending
on its size…
1. Small and Medium Stars
White Dwarf: Nuclear
energy gone 
contractions
www.williamsclass.com/.../StellarEvolution.htm
Black Dwarf: burned out
white dwarf
(lump of coal)
library.thinkquest.org/.../blackdwarfs.html
2. Large Blue Star
Supernova – a gigantic star
explosion, blasting away
the stars outer shell, seen
by us as a planetary
nebula, while the core
forms a
www.megcabot.com
Neutron Star aka ‘Pulsar’
Star; a result of a
gravitational collapse of a
star after the outer shell
has been blasted away.
flickr.com
3. Massive Blue Stars
Supernova – a gigantic star
explosion, blasting away
the stars outer shell, seen
by us as a planetary
nebula, while the core
forms a
Black Hole: where the
gravitational pull is so
powerful nothing can
escape its one-way surface!
http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~barnes/ast110_06/bhaq/Black_Hole_Milkyway.jpg
References:
http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112787/index.
html
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/