bibliography
What are stars?
What are constellations?
Are there different types of
stars?
Stars and
Constellations
How long does a star shine,
live its live for?
How far away are the stars?
Interesting Facts
By Madison
Note: the
suns
diameter is
1.4 million
km
What are Constellations
Thousands of years ago our ancestors began to
recognize a continual pattern in the stars every
time the earth rotated to night. These patterns
of stars are called constellations. Constellations
are not real, they are imaginative ways our minds
look at things e.g. the stars. Constellations are a
mix between shapes of animals or creatures
sometimes they are known to be a dot to dot
game. The Earths imaginary line called the
equator divides the planet into two halves, the
Northern and Southern hemisphere. Depending
on which side of the equator you live, you will see
different constellations. Our entire sky today is
divided into eighty eight constellations.
Stars are nearly the same as human being.
They have young stars, middle aged stars
and vary old stars, like humans they don’t
live forever. Usually, the life span for humans
is around 85 years old. Evidence tells us the
life span for a star is in the billions. One of
the most prominent stars is the sun, it is
considered to be a light weight star, it is
approximately 5 billion years old, and is
expected to live for another 5 billion years
until its fuel supplies completely run out,
there for it will become a white dwarf star
then to a cold dark object in space. For a
star it starts the same way, but after the
white dwarf has taken place, a chunk of
black rock called a black dwarf, remains.
In our galaxies there are five main
types of stars that we see at night, the
red star, the yellow star, the white star,
the blue star and the orange star.
Colour
Temperature
Constellation
Blue-white star
19982.2 +˚C
Orion
White star
11093.3˚ C
Lyra
Yellow-white star
6093.3˚ C
Auriga
Orange star
4149˚ C
Bootes
Red star
3038˚ C
scorpius
As a bench mark the sun is 150 billion km away
from Earth. The stars we see from Earth are millions
of times further away than the sun. the light from
the nearest star to Earth takes four years to reach
us. The galaxy so called ‘ the milky way’ has at least
100 billion stars, and the stars furthest away in this
galaxy would take 100,000 years for its light to
reach us. The milky way is just one of 100 billion
galaxies that make up the universe, therefore it
takes over 1o billion years for light to reach us
from these distant galaxies.
teresting
acts
argest star
The largest star is called the Super Giant star, it is known
as Mu Cephei. It is around 3,700 times bigger than the sun.
ottest star
the hottest star is called the White Dwarf. This tiny star has
its outer layer reaches the temperature of 200,000 degrees
Celsius, it is 30 times hotter than the sun.
ost powerful star
The Pistol Star is known to be one of the most powerful
stars. Comparing it with the sun, the Pistol star shines 10
million times more power.
•Kalman, B & Fast A 1999, Cosmic Light Shows,
Crabtree Pty company, Canada
•Prinja, R, Dr 2002,The universe Stars and
Constellations, 2nd edition 2007, Heinemann Library
Britain.
•http://www.kidscosmos.org/kid-stuff/stars-facts.html