The Basics of Stars: Types, Characteristics, and Distances

KOMPAS.com – Stars are celestial bodies that are capable of emitting light and producing their own energy.

Stars are the most widely known astronomical objects, and represent the most basic building blocks of galaxies.

It is also known to be responsible for the creation and distribution of heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

Quoted from the Britannica page, stars are massive celestial bodies made of gas and shine through radiation originating from their internal energy sources.

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Of the tens of billions of trillions of stars that make up the universe, only a small fraction can be seen with the naked eye.

Many stars appear in pairs, combined in many systems, or star clusters.

The members of such star groups are physically related through a common origin and bound by mutual gravitational attraction.

Star clusters are stellar associations, consisting of groups of stars that are physically similar and do not have sufficient mass as a group.

By far, red dwarfs are the most common in the Milky Way galaxy, even though they are very small and dim.

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Nearest and farthest stars

Technically, the closest star to Earth is the Sun. However, if it is not included in the list, the closest star to Earth is the Alpha Centauri star system.

Reporting from the Space.com page, Alpha Centauri is a star system with three star components which is 4.2 to 4.4 light years from Earth.

It is the closest star system to the solar system, and one of its stars is the closest star to planet Earth other than the Sun.

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The three stars in the system are Proxima Centauri, Alpha Centauri A, and Alpha Centauri B. Proxima Centauri is the closest to Earth, about 4.24 light years away.

For reference, one light year is roughly equivalent to 9.46 trillion kilometers. And the sun is only about 149 million kilometers away.

Although it is not known for certain which star is the furthest from Earth, researchers have found the most distant star ever identified.

Quoted from the NASA page, the Hubble space telescope has photographed the most distant star, with light taking 13.4 billion years to reach Earth.

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The previous record holder for the light of the most distant star was the star Icarus, which took 9 billion years to reach Earth.

The average distance between two stars in the Milky Way is about 5 light years or 47 trillion kilometers. In general, distances between stars vary greatly.

The Sun is about 4.25 light years from its nearest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri.

And Proxima Centauri is one of three stars in a system, only a fifth of a light year away from its nearest neighbor.

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2023-10-31 07:15:00
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