The Stellar Realm of space

Image of a White Dwarf star that was being measured by astronomers

Image: Courtasy of NASA

The Stellar Realm of

Space by: Ritvk Rajesh

A deep dive into the wonders of stars and their significance in space.

Heres a challenge. Take a moment and walk outside at night and find a place with a clear sky and observe the glistening sparkles of the millions of stars illuminating it. Have you ever wondered what they really are and why they behave in a certain way?

Stars have been one of the astronomers’ main focuses for as long as we can remember. Since Galileo, we have been analyzing and gathering info to try and understand the form and function of these massive spherical objects that illuminate our night sky. Without stars, the astronomical world and society would not be what it is today and neither would space exploration.

“Stars represent the building blocks of the universe, and that’s why I think understanding stars, how they evolve, and what their properties are, is crucial for understanding the universe as a whole,” says Mike Montgomery, a professor from the Astronomy Department at the University of Texas at Austin. The first thing we see in the sky during the day is the Sun, a main-sequence star. At night, you usually see the moon glowing but that is only because the light from the sun reflects off of the moon’s surface, and in places where light pollution is at a minimum, you can see small bright dots filling the night sky. These dots are stars. If you decide to take a closer look at what lies beyond the atmosphere, you may see more stars, some planets, and if your telescope is powerful enough, possibly galaxies. Galaxies too are filled with stars, which further explains Much like planets, in order to understand stars, we need to dive deeper into their structure and make-up. A field of research that has helped us understand what the inside of stars looks like is asteroseismology. “Asteroseismology is the idea of using vibrations of stars to try to do something similar(Similar to the seismology of Earth, which is measuring speed and direction, working out the density profile, etc) to tell what the interior structure of the stars is”, says Professor Montgomery. This is much like the seismology of planets which allows us to understand the internal components that makeup planets like Earth, the professor elaborated. Asteroseismology has helped us learn about and

Two binary stars being ejected from a galaxy

Depiction of neutron stars colliding

Image: Courtasy of NASA

understand what goes on below the surface of stars.

Certain things, like the temperature, the luminosity, etc., can be determined without special methods and tools. What goes on inside, like the nuclear fusion processes, cannot be determined so easily, and that’s where asteroseismology comes in.

Asteroseismology is not the only way to figure out what processes are happening within a star. Another way is by its stage. From proton stars to main-sequence stars to red supergiants, and depending on the star, eventually a supernova or a white dwarf. The stage of a star can determine more than people think, mainly the age of the star and the elements it is burning during the process of nuclear fusion.

“The old saying, live fast, die young, and it’s true for stars. The more energy they produce, the more massive they are. They spend their energy like drunken sailors, and the quicker they run out of energy, the quicker they die,” explains Don Winget, another professor at the University of Texas at Austin from the Astronomy Department. Color is a major defining factor of stars as well because it allows us to easily understand what temperature the surface is. Our sun is yellow, meaning it is reasonably hot and red stars are slightly less hot. The hottest stars are in the blue color, like Rigel, a blue supergiant star in the constellation Orion. White Dwarfs also exist at the temperatures of blue stars. They look white as the name suggests and their temperatures exceed 10,000 degrees Kelvin.

There are proton stars, which essentially are the first stage of stellar evolution. Next, there is the Main Sequence which is where our Sun is present. Then, there are Red Giant stars, which are stars with very hot cores but are puffed up on the outside making them very large in size, David Guszejnov explained, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the phenomena of star formation. After the Red Giant stage is the Red Supergiant stage, which is when the star is really nearing the end of its life. Afterward, and depending on the size of the star, the supergiant could become a supernova, neutron star, or white dwarf star.

Our sun is not and will not be large enough to become a supernova, therefore it will become a white dwarf. Stars that are large enough to become

“They (Stars) spend their energy like drunken sailors, and the quicker they run out of energy, the quicker they die.”

“core-collapsed supernovas”, which is when the core of a star collapses and becomes a supernova, could leave behind a Black Hole which is a region of space-time that has such an immensely powerful gravitational pull, that nothing at all can escape it.

Researchers are working on discovering new things that challenge our current knowledge of stars, namely the creation of matter in labs. When trying to understand the opacity of matter, researchers find out that its ability to block radiation(for the safety of astronauts and such, since radiation can be harmful) was wrong, explains Professor Montgomery.

“Galaxy evolution, galaxy formation is actually all a house of cards based on what we understand about fundamental physics and then stars is the first chance on that sort of scale, the solar system, objects, and then stars themselves, and we find out our understanding of stars themselves is not correct and needs significant revisions of what we call the constitutive physics that govern them,” says Professor Montgomery. What we know of stars, and the universe for that matter, cannot be proven to be 100% true because there may always be something that could prove a fact wrong. It is important that we continue our research so that at some point, we will be able to confidently say without a shadow of a doubt that something is true while something else is not.

Did you know that stars don’t only exist alone with planets revolving around them? There are instances where stars exist closely with other stars in star systems known as “stellar binaries”. The two stars are always moving relative to each other. “If the mass of the two objects were similar, then it would be more of a dance of the two objects and so stellar binaries are closer to that. It’s very rare for a Star to have a companion that has less than 10% of its mass, so most of them have similar mass ratios. So just for reference, I think the Sun is like a million times heavier than Earth, so that’s separate,” explains Dr. Guszejnov. This just shows how vast of a place space really is and can be.

“[Stars] are a fundamental building block of the universe. It’s stars, and the nuclear processes that go on with them are the only reason we are talking for several reasons…”, says Dr. Guszejnov. Without stars, we would not exist. Earth would be a cold rock in the middle of space that would not be able to support life. We owe almost everything to stars. For example, the carbon we humans are made up of comes from red giant stars, Dr. Guszejnov informs.

These facts merely scratch the surface of the vast ocean of space and specifically the significance of stars in our universe. There are so many more mysteries to be uncovered, and astronomers are hustling to do just that. It is important to understand objects like stars because, without them, we would not exist.

Closeup of a supernova remnant

A Timeline of Space

Exploration by: ritvik Rajesh

For thousands of years, astronomers have been trying to decipher the mysteries of space. Thanks to advancements in technology, we have physically been able to travel in space to get a better look at how are universe works. From first being able to go outside of Earth’s atmosphere, to getting ready to go to Mars. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most notable advancements that have shaped what space exploration is today.

1969

Neil Armstrong becomes the first ever person to set foot on the moon apart of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. This feat was something space agencies from all over the world had tried to accomplish and this alone has helped us understand more about our planet and our surroundings than ever before.

ASU

1961

Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union become the first person ever to go to space. This was a ground breaking feat that caused an astronomical exploration boom where countries from all over the world joined the race.

Companies, noteably SpaceX by Elon Musk hope to go to Mars by 2024 and bring people along in the 2030’s. This is the next step in getting to know our surroundings in space which can help us understand the unverise as a whole better.

USA

2019

A picture of a real blackhole was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. The blackhole was found at the center of a galaxy called Messier 87(M87). Astronomers couldn’t confirm the existance of blackholes but this helped us understand that the universe is a vast place and there is so much more to learn.

1971

The launch of the first spacestation named Skylab. This technological advancement helped pave the way for the International Space Station which is still in use today.

ASU

1970

The first softlanding on Venus. This event has helped pave the way for the exploration of our Solar System and the planets around us.

1998

The International Space Station(ISS) was built in union with the ESA(Europe), FKA(Russia), Japan (JAXA), and Canada(CSA). This advanced spacestation has helped space research accelerate faster than ever. The ISS may be seeing retirement around the year 2030. NASA hopes that commerical labs will replace the space station in orbit opening more job opportunities and research capabilities.

OUt of touch 16

Distances of our universe

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By: Alec Marintzer

This is a picture of sudents practicing their scouts practices like NASA would. -From NASA

The universe, filled with wonderful worlds and trillions of galaxies which contains us, humans. We have conquered our planet, made it into space, and even survived diseases threatening our lives. Soon we might even travel beyond what is possible, into the impossible, into the unknown. But first, we need to know what the universe is. The size of the universe is almost impossible to comprehend. It is the biggest thing that we know of. It is 613 mpcs (megaparsecs) wide. To know how big that is, we have to start from the smallest figure we can. Think of a football field, 100 yards in length. If you lined up about 17 football fields back to back, that would create a mile. There is a measurement for the distance that light travels in one year, which is called a lightyear. This measurement is based on two things, the speed of light and the time in one year. The speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second and there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year. By multiplying the speed of light by the seconds in a year, we get a

lightyear, or 5.9 trillion miles. There are actually larger measurements than just a lightyear. Take a parsec for example. A parsec is roughly 3 times bigger than a lightyear. Even a “Have patience. Don‘t be in a rush. parsec is not the It‘s good to have good successes in biggest measurement. There are kiloparsecs three months, it is more important to and megaparsecs that have steady successes throughout will really help to define the size of our your life, even if it takes longer to universe. A kiloparsec get to each one of them.“ (kpc) is 3,260 light years. With this, the size of our galaxy, The Milky Way, is about 30 kpc. A megaparsec (mpc) is even bigger 17 than a kiloparsec and a parsec by 10 and 100 times respectively. In the metric system, units are found by multiplying the previous number by 10 or adding

Image of the sun in our solar system. -From NASA an extra 0. The imperial system (the system US countries use today) is based on the imperials that decided that their foot was 12 inches and thus was the foot standard that some countries use today. I talked about both the metric system and the imperial system earlier but they shouldn’t be together normally. Getting back to the measurements, our galaxy, The Milky Way is about 30 kpc. This means that we are getting closer to the actual size of the universe. A megaparsec is even bigger than a kiloparsec by 1000. This means that the size of The Milky Way is .03 megaparsec (mpc). Scientists believe that the universe is 613 mpc. This means that if we were to fit 20,433 Milky Ways into our universe, it would fill it up. That’s enormous and it is still getting bigger! There are 613,000 kpc in the universe, or 1,998,380,000 light years, or almost 2 billion light years! That is enormous! This means that there are 63 quadrillion light seconds. This means that if a star blew up on one side of the universe, it would take 63 quadrillion seconds or almost 2 billion years for light to travel to the other side of the universe. Phones take much longer to send and receive information than light but just imagine if you were on one side of the universe and tried to call me, whos on the other

side of the universe. The place that you were calling me would be destroyed from the universe before the signal got to me. Not to mention that we would both be dead long before either of us got the call. That’s 11.7 sextillion miles or one hundred ninety nine sextillion, two hundred seventy two quintillion, one hundred twenty two quadrillion, seven hundred thirty two trillion, one hundred sixty billion football fields to reach from one corner of the universe to the other. This is insane and it’s still getting bigger The nearest star from Earth is Proxima Centauri, and it might never be “If you’re interested in explored. pursuing, if you know what Proxima Centauri your career is, try and learn is 4.246 as much as you can about it lightyears away as fast as You can, because from us. maybe you won’t like it.” To show a comparison, the farthest that any space probe has gone is about 14.5 billion miles, with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched 16 days apart in 1977 and have traveled almost 14.5 billion miles. That is less than 0.06% of the distance from Earth to Proxima Centauri or must travel almost 1700 times farther from us to get to Proxima Centauri. The voyagers were launched for the purpose of reaching farther into the universe than anything has ever been and to research all about the areas that it passes through. Also, the voyagers were used to contact life outside of earth. On the voyagers, there is a disk called

the golden record, that carries the sounds, cultures, and diversity of earth.

Have you ever wondered why making rockets and spacecraft takes so long? It’s because sending a spacecraft into space can be extremely costly, and if not done properly, could lead to a loss of money and time. The rockets cost around 1 billion dollars and all the scientific instruments which could go up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. “If your robot breaks, you can reach over and fix it. If our robot breaks, we’re done,” says Ross Beyer, a NASA scientist. This is why space travel could be difficult. If one bolt is not screwed in or a circuit board malfunctions, that could lead to a catastrophic end. In addition, the technology on the spacecraft is very precise. Because of this, scientists spend extra time measuring and checking every little thing inside the spacecraft before launching it into space where it can’t be reached or changed by humans.

Places like NASA and the University of Texas are training people to become astronauts and teaching about space. It is important to trust these people because they will make the world a better place. Space programs advancing in space technology are,“not day to day” states Ross Beyer but will definitely help in the future. Advancements in science could lead to better medical and better living standards. Who knows, we may even be living in space in a couple of years from now. By then, the most important thing is what the scientists researched about.

Youth development is also a big topic concerning astronauts and space development. The youth are our next generation and will run the world while we are gone. If we teach them information about space, they can go on and continue researching and learning like we have. Margret Baguio, an employer passionate about youth development at NASA’s Texas space grant says, “You and your classmates will be the ones that are finding how to develop the new rover and developing the gateway that’s going around the moon and landing astronauts on the moon and then on to Mars.” This goes back to the bigger picture that the youth are going to be incontrol in the years to come. The development of crucial sciences is key to the discovery of planets or behaviors in space, but if no one is there to use it and understand it, it won’t be as useful as it would be if the younger generations are better educated.