I just found out that every star is a sun?

Question

Okay, I know this sounds dumb, but I always just thought that stars were just.. Stars..

Like, they were small and stuff, yet shiny enough for us to see.

I feel so dumb, but can you guys explain more about this kind of stuff?

My boyfriend laughed at me when he told me haha.

Answer 1

Amazing, isn't it? :) and every element that exists in our bodies once was created in the heart of stars (yes, really http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/050921a.html )



here http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/



This blew my mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfs1t-2rrOM



a beautiful photo of the Pleiades: http://www.galaxyphoto.com/high_res/jw_pleiades_12SC.jpg



and here, the constellations: http://www.dibonsmith.com/constel.htm



and Google Sky is AWESOME :D http://www.google.com/sky/



download Stellarium, if you want to learn a lot about the night sky (it's open source, free) http://www.stellarium.org/

Answer 2

Well the sun is a star made of hydrogen gas and many other gases. As the particles fuse together in a process called nuclear fusion, the release the built up pressure as heat and light. Multiply that by about a trillion and you get a burning ball of heat and gas. Stars are made up of dust particles and lefovers from the formation of other stars. The sun, is actually a pretty small star compared to all the other stars around us. And stars, just like us are born and die out when they run out of particles. They then expand, become a red ball, then eventually collapse under their own gravity and explode into a supernova (BOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!) Ha! After that them may just dissapear, or become a dark hole powerfull enough to suck up other planets and light. I hope that helps!

Answer 3

The only reason that stars look small is that we are very far away from them. The closest star system is a triple star system, Alpha Centauri, and proxima Centauri is 4.23 light years away (not thousands of light years). The brightest star in the sky, Sirius A, is 8.6 light years away.The only reason the sun looks so big and bright to us is because we are close to it, only a little more than 8 light minutes away.



Astronomy is endlessly fascinating. I don't want to overwhelm you right at the beginning, but downloading Stellarium would be a good start, then go outside on a clear night and see if you can see Orion or the Big Dipper, although right now the Big Dipper may be pretty close to the horizon like is for me right now. ( I just checked Stellarium) and using Google or another search engine can open up your mind to a life-time hobby. Making the clock run forward or backward fast can be pretty exhilarating, complete with coordinate systems. You are God of your own local virtual universe on Stellarium, and Celestia lets you go anywhere you want in the universe. Let your natural curiosity take over and take it at your own pace Maybe you can pull a fast one on your boyfriend with something he doesn't know in a couple of weeks, or you can learn together.



I know it can be humiliating to realize that you are dumb, but you really aren't dumb. You are just ignorant, and your boyfriend made you aware of it. Being ignorant is not a sin. What IS a sin, now that you aware of your ignorance, is maintaining that ignorance because of a lack of curiosity. The next time you see or talk to your boy friend, thank him for making you aware of your ignorance, and then suggest that you learn together, then maybe show him Stellarium. Run the cursor over the bottom left corner to bring up the pop-up menus. You can change the default observing location from Paris, France to a location near you with a point and click world map, and make that location the default. I'm going to post the link to one of the Naval Observatory web pages where you can find out what your latitude and longitude is.



Good luck and welcome to a wonderful life time hobby that really can open up your mind, along with science fiction. I used to hate math, and now I find it fascinating, all because of a love of astronomy, science in general, and science fiction. I would be alive today without science, because I've been a type 1 diabetic for more than 54 years. Just don't put me in a timed math test, because my brain will freeze at some point in the test and I'll start to panic. I've had math testing anxiety for not quite a life time as well.



Google is wonderful. It's so much easier to use than it was even five years ago, and I've been using Google since 1004 or 1995. Don't be afraid of using help buttons. The only way to really learn soft-ware is to play with it.

Answer 4

Astronomy is thought to be one of the most humbling studies known to man.



- There are more stars in the Universe than there are grains of sand on earth.

- About 1,000 Earths could fit inside the planet Jupiter; about 1,000 Jupiters could fit inside the Sun.

- About a 1,000,000,000 Suns could fit inside the largest known star, VY Canis Majoris.

- There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 stars in the average galaxy.

- There are an estimated 125,000,000,000 galaxies in the Universe.

- Only a small portion (some believe only 10%) of the Universe is visible due to the finite age of the Universe.

- The Universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old.

- Humans have been around for "only" a few hundred thousand years. As Brian Greene puts it, "a mere cosmic flicker."

- There are objects known as black holes that are so huge that their gravity prevents even light from escaping them.

- Most, if not all, spiral galaxies are thought to have super-massive black holes at the centers.

- Every element in your body was produced either by fusion inside stars or in supernovae, the explosions of massive stars. Carl Sagan said everything is made of "star stuff."

Answer 5

The Sun is a Star but Stars come in many sizes and composition, they are gravitational bound liquid plasma, they are formed when giant clouds of matter collapse, sometimes triggered by a nearby Supernova..., Stars can be seen because of Nuclear Fusion in its core, which is the fusing of Hydrogen into Helium, but this fuel is limited, but most stars (the sun can live for around 12-14 billion years old in its Main Sequence, which is when Nuclear Fusion is taking place inside its core) live to be a few billion years old, but depending on its mass and size, it can be as small as a few million years, as is the case with the impeding supernova of Eta Carinae. The end of main sequence is when the fuel for Nuclear Fusion runs scarce, and begins to become unstable inside the stars core, then depending on its size it will go in several directions, smaller stars (such as the Sun) will become Red Giants, then White Dwarfs, and then even Black Dwarfs, but some can end in a spectacular display, a supernova, thousands to billion of times more energy then the sun in a few seconds. stars brightness (magnitude as seen from earth) is based upon its surface brightness (which also contributes to its colour, with red being the less bright, and blue being the brighter), but most stars we see are from the Milky Way, or even Andromeda (a nearby galaxy to the Milky Way in which the Solar System is located) can be seen but Andromeda can be seen through amateur or professional telescopes. Most Stars are a heck of a lot bigger than even the sun which is a few million times bigger than the earth. some are true monsters (baring Black Holes) in space.

Answer 6

Yes, there are many, many stars in the universe.



'Sun' is the name of the closest star to earth and the only star in the Solar System. It is also probably one of the smallest stars out there.



The reason that stars look small and shiny to the human eye is because it is really really far away from earth and the star shines "due to thermonuclear fusion in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space."

Answer 7

Explain what?

That our sun is a rather ordinary star?

I think you got that already.

The details would fill books. Actually, they do fill books, just find them and read.

Pick up an astronomy book, or go to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, and read.

You are embarking on a journey that will open your mind and broaden your horizon.

You will learn that our galaxy contains well over a hundred billion stars, some are 1000's of time larger and brighter than our sun. You will learn that there are galaxies, like ours, that are so far, light given off by their stars takes billions of years to reach us.

Welcome.

Answer 8

Sun is a star round which the earth orbits and from which it receives light and warmth.A brightest known star is 24 times brighter than the Sun.

Answer 9

Most of the stars visible to the naked eye are much much larger than the sun. They are the minority, though. Most stars are smaller than the sun, but it is the bigger brighter stars that we can see. Try doing some reading on this subject, you will find it very interesting.

Answer 10

Are you in high school? No offence but this is pretty basic. They are huge suns millions and billions of miles away they just look small and shiny because they are so far away and so bright. Some are huge compared to the size of our sun. There many things out there actually - black holes, supernovas, red dwarfs, galaxies and the rest is dark matter.

Answer 11

All stars are do sun, but they are so far that we see them small and they are shiny as compared to our sun but they are far. In fact, some of the stars are much bigger than sun

Answer 12

Your boyfriend is wrong so feel free to laugh at him! ;] ...



Not all stars are suns, all suns are stars. basically stars are gigantic balls of gas, mostly hydrogen gas. There is so much gas and other material that the gravity of this huge gas-ball holds everything together, creating the star. Every sun for example ours is a star, it is just a huge ball of gas and other material.

~Anon~

Answer 13

Each star is thousands of light years away (light year being the distance that light travels in 365 days)

They're enormous - as big as our sun - that's how we can even see them from so far away. From another solar system, that's how our sun looks.

Answer 14

Most of them are larger then the sun that is in our solar system. They are infinitely far away, and it takes a really, really long time for the light to reach us. In fact, most of the stars you see in the sky are so far away, they have probably collapsed or burnt out already, we just won't know it until the last of their light reaches us.

Answer 15

Lol,

I laughed at your question too, wow... Anyway, our "sun" is just a regular star, just like any other star. We, humans just call it "sun". Why? I don't know, maybe it's just English.

Answer 16

Perhaps you didn't read correctly/whole thing that SUN IS A STAR TOO.

Answer 17

Did know that our sun just happens to be a star? Or is it just that bright thing that hurts when you look at it.

Answer 18

Your wrong!



Actually every thing is a star. The sun is just one big star. So your boyfriend was right to laugh.

And if you want to know anything, heres a fact:



Light travels that fast that when you look at a star, your actually seeing it as it looked 4 years ago!

Answer 19

and everything that is a Sun is a star.

Answer 20

u found it right all are just stars!

Answer 21

there are a lot of suns in the milky way galaxy



http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/milky-way-as-massive-as-3-trillion-suns

Answer 22

They are Suns lighting up the other planets.

Answer 23

Here's something you might enjoy: http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

Answer 24

That is true

Answer 25

Maybe you should go the the library, it'll do you the world of good.

Answer 26

Its alright