Astronomy 101: Intro

Astronomy is such an interesting subject to me. It's so broad and vast and always has new knowledge coming in. The universe is so huge, it's uncomprehensible. New stars are forming everyday while others die out. The planets are forever changing, such as our own.

From telescopes such as the hubble, we know that there are billions of galaxies as there are stars. Each star has planets orbiting around them, as our planet orbits our star (the sun). Every galaxy has a approx. 100 billion stars like the milky way galaxy we are in. The closest star to our sun is the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, which is 4.22 light years away. And appears to be orbiting two other stars. Most systems are binary (two stars in one solar system) But very few like our own has one star.

In recent years other stars have been found that have earth like planets orbiting around it. Giving hope to finding other life forms aside from us. As in our solar system, astronomers has said life forms my be on others planets and the planets moons. Planets like Mars use to have water and has a polar ice cap on it's southern hemisphere made up of carbon dioxide. It is said that Mars use to have oxygen but because Mars no longer has a atmosphere, oxygen is not on the red planet anymore.

It take about 4.5 billion years for a star to die. The explosion is so great that it create black holes and any star or planets near by will be destroy. But our sun is a yellow dwarf which last 10 million years. Our sun is about half way through it's life span and in a 5 billion years will be nomore. When that happens, the sun hydrogen and helium in the core is mostly exhausted, the core will collapse. The temperture will rise and and the sun will become a red giant then planetary nebula then white dwarf... last a cold dark black dwarf.

I dont know why I wanted to do a blog about astronomy, I guess because I saw my old text book from astronomy class. But Knowing the science of what our universe is made up of... you can understand the different elements we are made of. Everything is connected and made of the same. It's important to invest time into other topics other then basketball and reality tv.
Until next time:)