Star Astronomy

Astronomy in general is a huge subject, as vast as the universe it describes. Even a subset star astronomy is huge. There is more than a single person could study in a lifetime just in our own solar system. That’s why many people decide to focus their attention on the stars.

Star astronomy begins about 94 million miles from Earth, with our own sun. Its heat is staggering when the amount of heat the earth receives from it over that great distance is realized. The sun contains about 98% of the mass in our entire solar system. That includes all the other planets even with huge Jupiter and Saturn on our side. It would take 109 Earths to span the sun’s disk, and over 1.3 million Earths would fit within the sun. The heat is generated from a nuclear reaction in the sun’s core where the pressure is 340 billion times the pressure on Earth and temperatures reach 27,000,000F. That would burn a pizza in a second.

Since it’s so close to Earth, relatively compared to other suns, the Sun is the most thoroughly studied star. The next nearest star is 250,000 times further from Earth. But when you travel far from Earth star astronomy really starts to hum. From Earth a person with good eyes can see 5000 stars in the Milky Way galaxy. More of the 1×10^22 stars in the universe can be seen through a telescope. By the way, that’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. Hundreds of thousands of stars come into view even with an amateur telescope. Wow! Larger telescopes can see other galaxies that contain an estimated total of over 200 billion stars. It would take many lifetimes just to count that high.

Through star astronomy, scientists have now shown that many stars have plants. Planets cause stars to wobble, and that can be measured. For the first time, in 2008, astronomers took images of distant solar systems. Maybe one of those planets contains intelligent life.

Will Vulcans or Klingons visit us tomorrow? Not likely. But star astronomy will keep on going. Maybe someone on one of those other planets is watching us!