The Life of a Star Essay -- essays research papers

The Life of a Star One night while little Jimmy was out camping with his father, he asked his father how a star is made? And his father said there are high-mass stars, intermediate-mass stars, and low-mass stars. The life cycles of stars follow three general patterns each associated with a range of initial mass. Much like human beings stars have a life cycle, they go threw birth, evolution, and death. And little Jimmy said how is that possible? First the star must be born. Many astronomers believe that a star is formed when large compression waves traveling through gas clouds create dense knots of gas is the cloud. The gravity of these knots then pules the other gas molecules. As the knot grows larger and larger the gravity starts attracting more and more gas molecules. Eventually, the knot coalesces into a growing sphere of compressed gas that reaches internal temperatures of a few million degrees Celsius. At this point the gases in the knot’s interior become so hot that their atomic nuclei begin fusing, creating large amounts of nuclear energy and forming a new star. Pressure from the radiation of new stars in turn causes more, higher-density zones to form in the gas cloud, which initiates the birth of more stars. Next the evolution and main sequence of a star, as it’s going through puberty. In its earliest stage, a typical star is large and emits infrared light. Within a million years, the gravitational attraction of the star’s material for itself causes the star to ...