Star Thing

The Beauty of Stars

I’ve talked a lot about the function of stars and why they are how they are. I’ve talked about how inspirational they have been to writers and artists for centuries. One thing I have never discussed is how the stars have been inspirational to me.

When I was a kid and stared up at the sky, I was transfixed by the light of the stars. I didn’t know about refraction and nuclear fission and everything else that made the stars what they were. All I knew was those tiny pinpricks of light were far far away and who knows what else was out there.

We could see stars because there were so massive and so bright that their light made it all the way home to earth. Imagine what else could be out there. If those stars were there, then planets could be out there. There could be animals and people on those planets.

From that moment forward, I was hooked on stars and space. I watched every science fiction show that was on television and even went to school to be an astrophysicist. Things didn’t turn out how I planned. It turns out I wasn’t as interested in the science of stars as I was the mystery of their existence.

Even after all these years, I am still mesmerized by their beauty and while I may not look at them each night through a massive telescope, they mysteries of the stars still pull towards science and science fiction. The main difference now is I write it.

Astronomical Distance

It’s often valuable to know the distance between stars and other stellar objects in the sky, but finding that can be incredibly difficult. Through the centuries, they devised three different units of measure to determine the distance not only between stars, but other major interstellar objects including galaxies.

The Astronomical Unit

The Astronomical Unit or AU is roughly the distance from the Earth to the sun or around 149,597,870 kilometers. It’s a standardized unit of measurement that has been around for a long time. Given that the distance is considerably shorter than the distance between stars and other interstellar objects, it is primarily used to computer distances within our own solar system. There has been some debate as to the AU’s accuracy given that it does not take into account general relativity or provide a frame of reference.

The Light Year

By definition, a light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one year, which is about 10 trillion kilometers. It’s a very popular measurement in popular science circles, but not often used in scientific papers and other more scholarly works because it has not been identified as a standardized unit of measurement. Since the distance is great, light years are generally used to provide the distance of starts and other interstellar objects, but not between galaxies.

The Parsec

The parsec is the recognized standard of measurement for interstellar objects and is equal to about 31 trillion kilometers. This is the unit used by scientists for scholarly works. The measurement uses standard prefixes for greater distances including kilo, mega and giga parsecs.

Solar Flare

There has been a lot of news this week about the powerful solar flare and solar storms emanating from a particularly active spot of the sun. A solar flare, also known as a coronal mass ejection, is a highly charged dense burst of particles shot out from the sun.

These particles are headed straight for Earth and has the potential to cause problems. While health wise, they aren't a concern, the particles can lead to problems sending and receiving various communication signals, loss of power and disruptions for satellites.

What this means for us on the ground, is that you could lose power and your television and cell phone receptions could be greatly diminished. The worst part is that this area doesn't show any signs of calming down anytime soon. There is still the possibility of strong solar storms and that means the problem won't be going away.

The main issue isn't the storms themselves. There sun is always doing this, but it's not everyday that its actually facing us. It just so happens that this active spot happens to be facing the Earth at this time, but that will eventually change. When that will happen I am not sure, but we're are constantly moving around the sun, so it's just a matter of time.

In the meantime, don't be surprised if you have bad satellite reception and your cell phone doesn't work very well. So much for that 4G they keep talking about. The sun is an amazing star and you definitely have to respect its power.

Stars Outside The Sky

When people think about stars, they either think about the massive balls of molten elements in the sky or Paris Hilton. The fact is that stars have come to mean far more than just the celestial objects.

The most common use of the word star in today’s society is to describe a celebrity. A star is someone that is the primary focus of a television show or movie. This person often has a natural charisma and leadership that makes them nearly worshipped by the masses.

Stars have been around since the movies began becoming popular in the early 1900s. Charlie Chaplain, Clark Gable and many more leading men and women have been called stars. Today, the word is loosely thrown around in Hollywood, but that’s just my opinion.

Stars have also become a generic term for space. When people go to the stars, they are going to outer space. There have been many books and movies that take advantage of this including Star Trek and Star Wars. In reality stars and space are completely different. Stars are a part of space, but people don’t actually travel to a star. That wouldn’t be rather pointless.

They instead travel to planets, which may house life and civilizations. If people traveled to the stars, they would burn up and die horribly before ever getting near it.

I don’t know why people have described these definitions to star, but it kind of trivializes what a star truly is. It’s a miracle that is one of the primary reasons there is life on this planet.

Stars As A Compass

Stars have been the inspiration for poets and writers for centuries, but they have also been used by sailors and explorers to help track their position. When you are out on the ocean and there isn't much to look at, the sky is the only thing you can go by.

When you look out at the ocean, all you see for miles and miles is open water. There are no island or landmarks to use as a possible point or origin or coordinations. During the day, the sailors could use the sun, also a star, to track their direction because they knew where the son would be during certain parts of the day.

When the sun set and the stars came out, sailors could use the familiar constellations and an instrument called an sextant to know their direction and position. Sailors would use the sextant to calculate the angles between the sun, the moon, known stars, etc and the horizon. Celestial navigation evolved over centuries as sailors perfected the method and moved further and further away from known lands.

While the measurements weren't perfect, they were at least able to provide an good idea of position. Today, we use satellites and other electronics to help determine our position, but many sailors still learn the old methods in case they find themselves lost in the sea with no power. Sometimes the old ways are the best because they lack the creature comforts that we have become accustomed to.

The White Dwarf

When people think of a star, they think of the supermassive balls of molten elements that radiate heat and warm the universe, but there is one type that is slowly cooling down. The white dwarf is the red headed stepchild of the stellar family.

When a star cools, but doesn't become a neutron star it can can become a white dwarf. These stars don't emit much light, but they are super dense. Imagine the mass of the sun in something the size of Earth. Needless to day, that can create a lot of gravity.

A white dwarf is a star in its death throws. While most stars continue to emit constant radiation because of elemental fusion, there is none going on in a white dwarf. It is simply using up fuel that it already had and slowly cools down. Eventually, its heat source will run out and become a black dwarf. This kind of star emits little or no light at all because all its fuel has been spent.

Scientists have yet to find evidence of a black star, which many think to mean that there are none currently in this stage of the universe. This means it takes a very long time to for this to happen and hasn't yet since the birth of the universe. Since billions and billions and billions of years have past, it stands to reason that black dwarfs are a rarity if they exist at all.

White dwarfs make up only a small part of the stars in the sky, but they are one of the most interesting star types.

Use Technology To See The Stars

When I was a kid, we didn't have things like tablet computers. If we wanted to see the constellations, then we had to buy these complex cardboard contraptions and hold it up to the night sky trying to line things up so we could tell what constellation was what.

More times than not, I couldn't even put the thing together and if I did, it was only about a 50 percent chance I could actually find the constellations. Until recently, when I looked up at the night sky, I was pretty much guessing. I knew the big ones like the Big Dipper and Orion, but that was about. I purchased an Android tablet computer and after a few weeks noticed a app that was supposed to show you the constellations real time.

The tablet was able get an idea of my position using the GPS, use the camera to figure the stars in the sky and then as I held it up to the night sky, show me the constellations. It showed not only the major constellations, but some of the more well known starts.

I can only imagine what Copernicus could have done with a gizmo like this. They probably would have stoned him for being a witch if he showed up one day with a tablet computer. They didn't really like that guy anyway and were just looking for an excuse to lynch him. It's nice to know that I don't have to memorize star formations to look at the many constellations in the sky.

Is that a star or a planet?

I have already talked about how near Earth objects such as satellites could be mistaken for stars in the sky, but manmade objects aren't the only ones up there. How many times have you looked up into the sky and seen a large bright spot and wished upon it?

Odds are that spot wasn't a star, but a planet. While stars generate a significant amount of light and can be seen even though the are light years away, the light tends to be dim. Planets such as Mercury and Mars are much closer and reflect star and sun light much like own moon does.

Satellites and planes move quickly across the sky, unlike stars, but planets don't move very fast either. You might be able to discern a change in position from one night to the next, but not if you are just looking up at the sky. For that, you may have to use a little common sense. Plants tend to be much brighter than the other objects in the sky and larger.

If you have a telescope, then you may actually be able to see the planet. I remember seeing the rings of Saturn one night and it was amazing. The best way to decide if a object is a star versus a planet is to find a resource that tells you the position of the planets for that night. There are Internet sites and books that tell you that kind of information.

Next time you look up and decide to wish upon that great big star in the sky, double check to see if it's a planet so you don't waste your wish.

Manmade Objects Sometimes Mistaken For Stars

It's not uncommon for satellites and other man made objects to be confused with stars, but Canadians may have mistaken a Lego man for an astronaut. Two teens from Canada used a weather balloon to launch a Lego man 24 kilometers into the air.

The teens researched Canadian law to make sure the launch was legal and received some interesting footage. While Canadians may have mistaken the small weather balloon for a star, it just goes to show you the different things that are hovering in our atmosphere.

People have been wishing on stars for hundreds of years, but many of the stars wished on today may be one of dozens of satellites orbiting the Earth. Since the space race began, countries have been launching anything they can into the atmosphere and when they are done simply leave it up there and wait for its orbit to degrade and fall to the Earth.

You can tell a man made object from a celestial object in the sky because stars don't move quickly across the sky. It looks to us from Earth that the stars slowly move across the sky, but it's actually us that are moving. If an object seems to travel from across the sky faster than everything else, it's probably a man made object.

If it moves quickly across the sky in a flash, then it either a meteor or satellite that fell into our atmosphere where it burned up. You'd be surprised exactly how much junk is orbiting this planet.

The Stars We See

While human life can be measured in years, a entire life is only a blink for a celestial object such as a star. Their life spans are billions of years and when they do die, it forever changes the universe around them.

When we look up at the sky and see the stars twinkling back at us, we are not actually seeing the stars as they are now. Time is constant throughout the universe, but perception changes significantly. It takes light 8 minutes to travel from our sun to the Earth. It takes years for light from other stars to reach Earth.

Some stars are so massive and so luminous that their light can take hundreds of years to reach Earth. What does that mean to us? It means that they light we are seeing is what that star looked like hundreds of years ago.

Imagine looking up at a star and realizing that at this exact time at that star its world could be completely different. It could be gone. It could be a black hole, sucking in the matter around it. It could be about to go into nova or supernova. There could be worlds orbiting around it. Life could be forming on those planets or a civilization could have just discovered the wheel.

We won't know anything about the current state of the star for hundreds of years. We won't even be here. It's just amazing to know that we're catching a recap of what happened to the star far in the past.