In clear weather, myriads of tiny “lamps” light up in the night sky, with which mankind associated the phenomena of birth and death, earthly cataclysms and catastrophes, creative discoveries, and even the change of entire eras. These inhabitants of the sky are called stars. The brightest and most beautiful of them are experiencing the heyday of their existence, followed by inevitable extinction and death.
Where do stars come from?
These are material bodies, for the "construction" of which matter and energy are needed. After the Big Bang, the processes of formation of new substances and objects are continuously taking place in the Universe. The life path of a star is characterized by processes that mark its dawn, adulthood and decay process:
- In a cloud of gas, consisting mainly of hydrogen and dust, under the influence of gravitational forces, the matter is drawn into the central region.
- Thermal energy is released from the hot bowels of a shrinking gas and dust cloud.
- Hot gases "burst" the star, rushing outward, and the force of gravity, on the contrary, compresses them to the center. When these energies come into balance, the protostar no longer contracts, but evenly radiates light into outer space.
- Nuclear fusion reactions take place in the cosmic body: hydrogen is converted into helium. Once this process is over, the star will begin to die.
At the end of life, an exhausted celestial body becomes a white dwarf with a huge density of matter (1 tsp can weigh as much as a whole freight train).
The most beautiful "celestials"
Some stars spread a uniform cold brilliance, others are constantly pulsating, others are either burning or disappearing in the sky. Many of them are associated with many myths and legends. The most beautiful and brightest stars, according to the legends of ancient people, have a special divine energy that can radically change a person's life. Names such as Rigel, Altair and Sirius are familiar to many, but their mysterious beauty is associated with physical laws that are the same for everything that exists in space.
Looking at the clear night sky, the observer immediately draws attention to 3 bright stars lined up in one straight line at a relatively short distance from each other. This is Orion's Belt - a constellation symbolizing the brave hunter Orion, whose life path is closely connected with ancient Greek mythology. If you look a little down and sideways, as if a person puts his foot to the side, you can see the bright star Rigel. From Arabic, the name is translated as "leg". From the Sun to Rigel - 770 light years.
In diameter, the white hot giant exceeds the luminary of the solar system by 68 times. The temperature on its surface reaches 11200 K. Rigel is interesting in that at a distance of 1 a. That is, from it (the distance from the Earth to the Sun), any cosmic body will be swept away by the energy of a stellar vortex raging in circumstellar space.
According to one of the legends, the hunter Orion ended up on the island of Chios and fought terrible monsters there, protecting the locals from them. The king agreed to marry his daughter Merope to him. But when the animals were destroyed, King Enopion refused. At night, the satyrs made Orion drunk, and the king gouged out the eyes of the hunter.
Blind Orion learned that Helios - the God of the Sun - could restore his sight and set off on a long journey. He visited the blacksmith Hephaestus, took one of his students with him, sat him on his shoulders and went to the border of the Earth. The student told me where to go. Vision was returned to the hunter by the great Helios.
The celestial object is located in the constellation Eagle and is literally translated from Arabic as "a flying hawk." The star is at 159 trillion. km. from the sun. The temperature at its outer boundaries reaches 8000 K. The star is interesting in that it rotates around its axis in 6-10 hours. This rapid reversal resulted in Altair being 20% smaller in diameter than along the pole line. It has the shape of an ellipse and belongs to the class of white hot stars.
According to Japanese legends, the king's daughter Vega and the shepherd Altair, who guarded the star flocks, passionately fell in love with each other. But the king was against their marriage and asked the sun goddess Amaterasu to destroy their union. An insurmountable barrier appeared between the lovers in the form of the Milky Way.
Vega stopped weaving her canvases, and Altair's star herds dispersed in different directions. The time of rain and bad weather has come on Earth. People, turning their eyes to the night sky, did not see more stars. And then the earthly inhabitants began to ask Amaterasu to return the opportunity for young people to meet. Once a year, on the 7th day of the 7th month, lovers can now see each other.
The celestial body is located in the constellation Canis Major and exceeds the Sun in brightness by as much as 20 times. But its mass is only 2 times greater than that of the central object of the solar system. Sirius spreads a cold bluish glow, which indicates the life "potential" of the star, although its age is approaching 230 million years. An interesting fact is that this space object is moving towards the Sun with a catastrophically fast speed - 7.6 km / s. Every year Sirius will become brighter and larger in the night sky.
Mentions of the star can be found in the writings of the Sumerians and ancient Egyptian sages, in the Koran, in Greek mythology. And to this day, some African tribes, untouched by civilization, worship Sirius. There is a legend that on the eve of earthly catastrophes, the inhabitants of Sirius visit the Earth to warn people about the impending disaster.
Time intervals in the heavenly realm are calculated in millions and billions of years. There will be many more generations of people who will admire the magnificent celestial bodies moving at great speed in outer space. And amazing tales and legends will be formed about the most unusual stars, surrounding them with a halo of beauty and mystery.
The science
Where do stars come from and where do they disappear to? What is dark matter and dark energy? Is there life on other planets? Can stars live forever?
In spite of huge store of knowledge accumulated over many centuries, we still cannot explain many things. We cannot explain because we do not understand how this is even possible.
These are not necessarily some distant and unattainable objects and strange phenomena. regular stars hold many secrets yet to be uncovered. Find out what mysteries the stars have posed to astronomers.
1) The oldest star that shouldn't exist
The star whose secret scientists have yet to discover has been named SDSS J102915 +172927 . Since there are too many stars in the Universe, and there can be thousands of objects for research, it is not yet possible to give everyone more understandable names. Weird name indeed. indicates its approximate location.
In 2011, a group of European astronomers discovered this star in the constellation Leo. This star is small and only 80 percent of the size of the Sun. Moreover, researchers believe that it is about 13 billion years old.
Since the universe itself, according to modern concepts, is already about 13.7 billion years old, this star may be the oldest known star in the universe. In this star, especially, no oddities were noticed, except for the fact that ... she should not be in sight.
The star is on 99.99993% hydrogen and helium, elements that are too light to condense and form stars on their own. If these data are put into any modern computer models, then the programs will show that the existence of such stars is impossible.
So far, science is powerless to answer the question of how this star managed to form without heavier elements.
2) A mysterious star surrounded by spirals
Located about 400 light-years from Earth in the constellation of the Wolf, the star SAO 206462 attracted the attention of astronomers in 2011. They were surprised not by the star itself, but by what surrounded it: the impression was created as if the star had spiral branches that envelop it.
Spiral formations are not something strange in space, they can often be seen in galaxies, but scientists have never seen any star have spiral branches.
There are suggestions that spirals formed due to the gravity of the planets, which formed from the dust surrounding the star. However, there is still no clear evidence to support this theory. This will remain a mystery until planets are found that could swirl matter around a star and form spiral arms.
3) Forever young special stars
Messier 4 - globular cluster, which is located at a distance of 7200 light years from Earth. If we imagine that galaxies also have a life cycle, then this galaxy would be almost at the very end of its life path. She is approximately 12.2 billion years old.
It is believed that all galaxies eventually turn into globular clusters. When all the reserves of gas and dust that are necessary for the formation of stars are depleted, all the stars of the galaxy will be in the last stages of their life cycles.
When scientists looked at this special galaxy in September 2012 with telescopes in Chile, they saw a star that was rich in material such as lithium. Lithium is not exactly an unusual material for stars. But if it does exist, this component burns out during the first few billion years of a star's life cycle.
Since most of the surviving stars in this cluster are about 10 billion years old, finding a star with such an element in its composition is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Scientists believe that this star somehow replenishes lithium reserves which protects it from aging. Many astronomers call it "star - fountain of youth". How a star manages to replenish lithium is a mystery that astronomers puzzle over.
4) Andromeda stars that manage to avoid black holes
This mystery is associated with several million stars that oppose just one. Just 2.5 million light-years away is the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest spiral galaxy. This galaxy looks like this:
At the center of this galaxy is a supermassive black hole, a huge vacuum cleaner that capable of absorbing even particles of light.
In 2005 the space telescope Hubble was able to allow scientists to see its center, revealing a blue pie-shaped disk that was orbiting at a very dangerous distance from the black hole. Further analysis showed that it was not only hot dust. The glow came from millions of young blue stars.
These stars orbited the black hole at over 3.7 million kilometers per hour. This speed allows you to go around the earth's equator in just 40 seconds. A similar disc, based on the knowledge we have. Should not exist. The gas that formed this disk, as well as the stars themselves, should have been blown away by the incredible gravity of the black hole. How these stars ended up intact remains a mystery.
5) Massive stars with unusual properties in the constellation Ophiucus
Star J1822.3-1606 refers to a special type of star called a neutron star. It is located at a distance of 20 thousand light years from us in constellation Ophiuchus.
The stars may end their lives three ways: turn into white dwarf (for example, smaller stars like our Sun), in neutron star (if the star is larger), or black hole (if the star is very large). If the stars are very massive, they explode. This phenomenon has been named supernova .
Types of Neutron Stars: Magnetars and Pulsars
There are several types of neutron stars: magnetar with the strongest magnetic fields in the universe and pulsar , which sends rays of electromagnetic radiation through its poles (it is somewhat reminiscent of a lighthouse).
For years, all we knew about these massive stars was that they can belong either to one group or to another. But in 2011 the telescope "Swift" discovered a star that had the properties of both groups. To date, astronomers know of 2 such unusual stars.
So far, scientists do not know how one star manages to have such strange properties. If in the near future we manage to find other similar examples, it will mean that There are far more such stars in the Universe than we thought.
6) The exoplanet of the constellation Phoenix, which was supposed to be swallowed by the parent star
Far star Wasp 18 is located at a distance of about 330 light years from Earth in the constellation Phoenix. It is about 25 percent larger in mass than the Sun. The riddle is not the star itself, but what revolves around it.
In 2009 Coel Hellier from University of Kiel discovered that this star has a planet in its orbit. The exoplanet is named Wasp 18b , it is slightly larger than Jupiter, but 10 times heavier. This mass is the maximum limit. If it were a little larger, then the object could be called brown dwarf - that is, a substellar object.
Giant planet and parent star
Astrophysicists baffled that the planet rotates away from its home star at a record short distance- only 3.2 million kilometers. For comparison: Mercury is located at a distance of 58 million kilometers from the Sun.
The planet Wasp 18b is so close to its star that it has time to make a complete revolution around it in 23 earth hours, and the temperature on its surface is 2200 degrees Celsius.
Being at such a close distance, the planet should eventually merge with the star, but she is not going to do this for 680 million years. Given the large mass of the star, it should have attracted the planet to itself a long time ago.
How did this planet manage to form and stay in orbit at a distance at which planets should not exist at all - mystery shrouded in darkness.
7) Stardust finds its way home
Pulsar PSR B1257+12 is the remnants of a supernova, but the researchers did not expect that there could be planets near it. They discovered an entire star system. Around this pulsar revolve 3 ordinary planets and one dwarf planet.
Believing that such a phenomenon could be very common, astronomers began to observe other pulsars in search of planets, however, as it turned out, only one pulsar star sheltered one single planet. This means that pulsars have planets in their orbits on very rare occasions.
The formation of mysterious planets around pulsars
Astronomers cannot yet understand and explain the process that allows planets to form around pulsars. According to one theory, these planets formed in much the same way as our Earth - from planetary disk , which initially surrounds the star.
However, dust and any other materials that are the building blocks for planets must be thrown billions of kilometers into space when a supernova explodes. How was the gas and dust able to return to the pulsar left after the explosion and form as many as 4 planets, is completely incomprehensible.
8) An unusual supernova explosion in the constellation Monoceros
Star V838 Unicorn is located 20 thousand light years from Earth and is considered one of the largest stars in the universe.
In 2002, a powerful flare was recorded on this star. At first, researchers believed that this was an ordinary supernova, a star that explodes, leaving behind a core (white dwarf), which accumulates around itself a large cloud of hydrogen. The star went out after a few weeks, as expected, so astronomers entered it in their reference books as a supernova.
Too strange a star for a white dwarf
However less than a month later the star lit up again. Since the interval between explosions was too short to cause another supernova, astronomers were surprised and began to study this phenomenon in more detail. It became clear that from the very beginning they made a mistake by writing this star into the list of white dwarfs.
This star exploded on its own and repeated this process several times during the following months, then flashing, then fading. During the brightest flash, it became a million times brighter than the Sun and was at that moment one of the brightest stars in the sky.
Usually stars get brighter before they die, but measurements have shown that the star V838 Monocerotis was only a few million years old, which is quite a bit by stellar standards. Telescope Hubble took pictures of the star after the flash, which showed a cloud of gas and dust around it.
According to one version, this the star could collide with some invisible object, for example, another star or planet, but scientists are still at a loss as to what actually happened.
9) Planet Wanderer
CFBDSIR 2149-0403 counts brown dwarf . Thermonuclear reactions cannot occur in its core, so this object cannot develop into an ordinary torture star. Although many researchers characterize it as star AB Dorado due to its size and mass, others believe that it is gas giant.
If it's a gas giant, then he doesn't have a parent star, so it's an orphan planet.
The movement of lonely orphan planets is not at all chaotic
Although scientists suspect that the universe Millions of lonely planets roam, only 4 of them are known today. The nearest planet wanderer is located 130 light years from Earth. The planet does not have a large star around which it could orbit, so its movement is influenced by other stars in the AB Doradus star group.
This does not mean that the planet moves in space along an arbitrary trajectory., this is a common misconception about the wanderer planets. However, why the planet strayed from the parent star remains a mystery.
10) Disappearing Stardust in the Centaurus Constellation
An object TYC 8241 2652 located at a distance of 450 light years from us in the constellation of the Centaur. The star is thought to be about the same size as our Sun and about 10 million years old, although our star is much older, already 4.5 billion years old.
From 1983 to 2008 scientists observed a ring of dust around this star, hoping to learn something new about our own system and exactly how planets form.
Where did the cosmic dust cloud go?
However, when they tested this star again in 2009 using more modern technology, they were amazed: they saw a star, but without any cloud around. Until relatively recently, this cloud was perfectly visible, but now it has disappeared, leaving behind not a single planet or hints of where it could evaporate. Scientists are still thinking about this riddle.
Nothing is more discussed during the various awards ceremonies than the outfits of the stars. Celebrities love to show off their splendor in front of the lenses of photojournalists and attract the attention of the public. But sometimes their very original outfits cause frank bewilderment. See the weirdest celebrity outfits of 2015.
17 PHOTOS
1. Madonna in a very original, if not strange, outfit at the Grammy Awards in 2015. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images; Starraks Photo/REX). 
2. Famous supermodel Irina Shayk at the Vanity Fair After Party in Los Angeles. On Irina, with her perfect figure, this very ambiguous dress looks perfect. But if you choose a similar dress for prom 2015, you can be very disappointed when you see yourself in the mirror, provided, of course, if your figure is not an exact copy of the beautiful Irina. (Photo: DANNY MOLOSHOK/Newscom/Reuters; Evan Agostini/Invision/AP). 
3. Rihanna seems to be very pleased with her voluminous dress, which she chose for the Grammy Awards in 2015. (Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP). 
4. American singer Toni Braxton in a very original black dress (especially behind) at the Grammy ceremony. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images). 
5. British singer Rita Ora in a very revealing dress at the Vanity Fair After Party in Los Angeles. (Photo: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP). 
6. Joy Villa in a mesh dress at the 2015 Grammy Awards. (Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP). 
7. Famous model Alessandra Ambrosio at the InStyle and Warner Bros party on the occasion of the Golden Globe Awards. It seems that fashion designers decided to save on fabric. (Photo: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP). 
8. Known for the series "Game of Thrones" British actress Gwendolyn Christie in the "cape of a superhero" at the awards ceremony "Elle Style Awards" in London. (Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images). 
9. Celebrity Kim Kardashian in a "robe" at the Grammy Awards in 2015. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images; Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) 
10. British singer Charlie XCX most likely just forgot to wear a dress to the NME Awards at the Brixton Academy in London. (Photo: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images) 
11. FKA Twigs at the Brit Awards in London. It is difficult to even describe this intricate outfit in words. (Photo: Brian Rasic/REX; Ian Gavan/Getty Images) 
12. American pop singer Jordyn Sparks at the Grammy Awards. Just a terrible dress. (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images). 
13. Actress Rose McGowan at the Elton John AIDS Foundation After Party after the Oscars in Los Angeles, either in a dress or a jacket. (Photo: GUS RUELAS/Newscom/Reuters; Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP). 
14. Selita Ebanks - model and "angel" Victoria's Secret - came to the awards ceremony "Film Independent Spirit Awards" in Los Angeles in "pajamas". (Photo: Jim Smeal/BEI/REX; Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP). 17. Australian singer Sia (Sia Furler) at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills. Her outfit raises only one question: what would that mean? (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images).
