Stars |
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| Definition |
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| A star is a celestial body similar to the Sun, which shines thanks to nuclear reactions which occur in its center. With the exception of the Sun, stars appear to the bare eye under the shape of a brilliant point, sparkling because of the atmospheric turbulence, without immediate visible movement with regard to the other fixed objects of the sky. All the stars are considerably more taken away from the Earth than the Sun. The closest star, Proxima of the Centaur, is situated in the approximately four years | lights of the Solar system, is near 250 000 times farther than the Sun. A classic star looks like the Sun. Its mass is of the order of some 1030 kilograms, and its beam of the order of some million kilometers. The power shone by a star as the Sun is of the order of 1026 watts. Stars form further to the contraction of a nebula of gas and dusts under the influence of the gravity. If the heating of the matter is sufficient, it starts the cycle of the nuclear reactions in the heart of the nebula. The energy loosened by these | reactions is then sufficient to stop its contraction because of the pressure of radiation so generated. The number of stars in the universe is estimated between 1022 and 1023. The set apart Sun, the stars are little brilliant to be observable in broad daylight. The number of observable stars night in the bare eye and by clear time varies between hundred and several thousands according to the conditions of observation. | ||
| Structure of a star |
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| The structure
of a star contains various zones: the heart, the radiative zone, the
zone convective, the photosphere and the crown. |
warmed on the base of the layer convective, the matter
rises under the influence of the push of Archimedes, warms the matter
surrounding (towards the surface), cools and plunges towards the base of
the zone convective for a new cycle of convection. |
It is more or less spread, of some hundreds of kilometers for the dwarf stars (lower than 1 percent of the beam in some tens of percents of the beam of the star for the most huge. The light which is produced contains all the information on the temperature, the gravity of surface and the chemical composition of the star there. For the Sun, the photosphere has a thickness about 400 kilometers. The crown is the external zone, thin and extremely warm of the Sun. We can observe it during the eclipses of Sun. It is thanks to the study of the crown in the 19th century that the astronomer Jules Janssen discovered the existence of the helium, the rare gas the name of which makes reference to the Sun ( Helios). |
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| Sirius, the most brilliant | Proxima centauri, the closest | Star of Barnard, red dwarf | ||
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| Characteristics |
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| The man imagined that the most brilliant stars could constitute figures. These groupings differ from time to the other one and from a civilization to the other one. Figures become traditional, often in touch with the Greek mythology, are called constellations. The stars of a constellation have nothing in common, if it is not to occupy, seen by the Earth, a position is placed next in the sky. It can be very remote some of the others. However, the international astronomical | Union defined a list standardized by the constellations, attributing to each a region of the sky, to facilitate the localization of the heavenly objects. Stars have an included mass enter approximately 0,08 and 120 times the mass of the Sun. This size determines the life of the star. A very massive star will be very brilliant but its life cycle will be very reduced. Below the minimal mass, the heating generated by the contraction is insufficient to start the cycle of nuclear reactions, beyond the | maximal mass, the force of gravity is insufficient to retain all the matter of the star once the begun nuclear reactions. Compared with our planet (approximately 12 000 km in diameter), stars are gigantic: the Sun is one diameter one and a half million kilometers and certain stars as Antares or Betelgeuse is one diameter 800 time superior in in our Sun. The stellar research as for her uses rather the size of the beam rather than the diameter which remains a notion in two dimensions. | ||
| The magnitude is a logarithmic scale of the radiative stream of the star. We distinguish the visible magnitude which depends on the distance between the star and the observer, and the absolute magnitude, which is the magnitude of the star if this one was arbitrarily placed in 10 parsec of the observer. The absolute magnitude is naturally directly connected to the luminosity of the star. This last size is used by the stellar models of evolution, whereas the magnitude is rather used for | the observations, because the eye possesses an also logarithmic sensibility. Most of the stars seem white in the bare eye. But if we look attentively, we can note a beach of colors: blue, white, red and even gilded. The fact that stars show various colors remained for a long time a mystery. The color allows to classify stars following their spectral type (which is in touch with the temperature of the star). The spectral types go of the most purple to the most red, that is of the warmest | coldest verse. They are classified by letters O, for example, is of spectral type G. But it is not enough to characterize a star by its color (its spectral type), it is also necessary to measure its luminosity. For a given spectral type, the more the star is big, the more its luminosity is strong. Stars O and B are blue in the eye, stars A are white, stars F and G are yellow, stars K are orange, and finally stars M are red. | ||
| Categories of stars |
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| - The brown dwarfs are not stars or rather they are failed stars. Their mass is situated between those of the small stars and that of the big planets. Indeed, are needed 0,08 solar masses so that a primal star begins thermonuclear reactions and becomes a real star. The brown dwarfs are not massive enough but they shine a little heat, this emitted heat is not more than the residue of its formation. It is possible that at the beginning of their formation they started a thermonuclear fusion but they eventually put out. The brown dwarfs have never affected the critical mass (13 times the mass of Jupiter or 0,08 times the mass of the Sun) to ignite and maintain a durable state. We consider a brown dwarf as cold in 1000°C, and of warm from 2000°C. The brown dwarfs are with difficulty observable, because they emit only a weak radiation in the infrared. |
- The red dwarfs are small red stars. These celestial bodies among the smallest as the white dwarfs, the stars with neutrons and the brown dwarfs do not consume nuclear fuel. The mass of the red dwarfs is included between 0,08 and 0,8 solar masses. A temperature of surface between 2 500 and 5 000 K confers them a red color. Because of their small mass, the red dwarfs consume very slowly their hydrogen and thus possess a very long life cycle estimated between some tens and 1000 billion years. They contract and warm up slowly until all their hydrogen is consumed. The red dwarfs are probably the most numerous stars of the universe. Proxima of the Centaur, the star the closest to us is a red dwarf, as well as about twenty the others among the most close thirty stars. |
- The yellow dwarfs are stars of average size. (The astronomers classify the stars only in dwarfs or in giants) they have a temperature of surface about 6000°C and shine of yellow one lively, almost white. At the end of her life, a yellow dwarf becomes a red giant then a white dwarf. The Sun is a typical yellow dwarf. The red huge phase announces the end of life ' a yellow dwarf. A star reaches this stage when its heart exhausted its main fuel, the hydrogen. Fusions of the helium start then. Whereas the center of the star contracts, its external layers swell, cool and redden. Transformed into carbon and into oxygen, the helium runs out in his turn and the star dies. The celestial body gets rid then of its external layers and its center contracts to become a dwarf white with the size of a planet. |
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| - The blue giants and red super giants are very warm and brilliant. These stars are ten times as big at least as the Sun. The blue giants are extremely brilliant, of absolute magnitude 5, 6 and more. Very massive, they quickly consume their hydrogen and their life cycle is very short of the order of 10 in 100 million years, thus very rare. When the hydrogen in its heart was consumed, the blue giant merges then the helium. Its external layers swell and its temperature of surface falls until become a great red giant. The star makes then more and more heavy elements: iron, nickel, chromium, cobalt, titanium... At this stage, the fusions stop and the star becomes unstable. It explodes in a supernova and dies. The explosion leaves behind her a strange heart of matter which will remain intact. This corpse is, according to its mass, a star with neutrons or a black hole. |
- The white dwarfs are residues of faded stars. It is the last but one phase of the evolution of the stars the mass of which is included between 0,3 and 1,4 times that of the Sun. The density of a white dwarf is very high: a dwarf white with a solar mass has a beam of the order of that of the Earth. The strong density of the matter makes that the quantum phenomena become little by little dominating and we say that the matter is in a state of degeneration. The diameter of the white dwarf does not depend any more on its temperature, but depends mainly on its mass: the more its mass is raised, the more its diameter is weak. However, there is a value over which a white dwarf cannot exist, it is the limit of Chandrasekhar. Beyond this mass, the pressure due to electrons is insufficient to compensate for the gravity and the star continues its contraction until become a star with neutrons. |
- Stars with neutrons are very small but very dense. They concentrate the mass of a star as the Sun in a beam about 10 km. They are the vestiges of very massive stars of more than ten solar masses. When a massive star arrives at the end of existence, it collapses on itself, by producing an impressive explosion called supernova. This explosion scatters enormous quantities of matter in the space but saves the heart of the star. This heart contracts and is largely transformed into a star with neutrons. These objects possess very intense magnetic fields. Along the magnetic axis propagates particles in charge, electrons for example, which produce a radiation synchrotron. |
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| - The black holes, sometimes, the heart of the dead star is too massive to become a star with neutrons. It contracts inexorably until form this astronomical object that is the black hole. Envisaged from the 18th century, the theory supporting the existence of the black holes stipulate that it is about so dense objects that their escape speed is superior at the speed of light - that is even the light cannot overcome their gravitational | strength of surface, and stays prisoner. Of this disturbing characteristic result the "black " and " dark" qualifiers, but the most exact term would "be certainly "invisible", because it is very there about a total absence of luminosity. The theory defines also exactly the intensity of the gravitational field of a black hole. It is such as no particle crossing its horizon, theoretical border, can escape from it. | 
If most of the stars take place easily in the one or other one of these
categories, it is only about temporary phases. During its existence, a
star changes shape and color, and can pass from a category to the other
one. |
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category : stars |
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Stars |
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Astronomy - october 15th 2007 |
