Birth, of star

Cold and soft radio, microwave and infrared radiation. Telescopes sensitive to the gentle radiation of the infrared unveil some of the more tender scenes in space, such as cloud formation and the birth of stars. They... 

The revelatory power of the new astronomy, especially astronomy associated with the extreme forms of radiation, resides in its capacity to expose previously unknown processes to reason and understanding gamma astronomy, the most violent phenomena in the Universe, such as the rupture and destruction of stars, and infrared astronomy, the gentle events, such as the birth of stars. Optical astronomy fills the relatively calm gap between stellar birth and death, whilst millimetre radioastronomy opens our minds to the formation of molecular structure in great clouds of cold gases and opaque dusts, far from any devastating light. 

The birth of stars depends on two essential characteristics of the universe. First, the universe has apparently never been completely homogeneous. As the discovery of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy has confirmed, there are very small differences in the concentration of matter in various parts of the universe. In some regions of space, the density of matter is slightly greater than it is in other regions. Second, the force of gravity acts to attract any two particles anywhere in the universe. 

The Bo Hai is the birth of a star, a translation so true to the spirit of the original that you may find yourself preferring it occasionally for the poetry alone. 

Several hundred kilometres further east, in Finnish Karelia, the nineteenth century saw the birth of legends which were passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Elias Lonnrot, a doctor, collected these fables and used them to create the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala , which starts with a creation myth. In the first rune, the daughter of the air lets herself fall into the sea. She is made pregnant by the wind and the waves. The duck, as water mother, comes to her, builds a nest on her knee, and lays her eggs. These roll into the sea and break, giving rise to the Earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon and the stars ... 

The matter that made up the solar nebula from which the solar system was formed already was the product of stellar birth, aging and death, yet the Sun is 4.5 billion years old and will perhaps live to be 8 billion years but the Universe is thought to be 15 billion years old (15 Gyr) suggesting that perhaps we are only in the second cycle of star evolution. It is possible, however, that the massive clouds of H atoms, formed in the close proximity of the early Universe, rapidly formed super-heavy stars that had much shorter lifetimes and entered the supernova phase quickly. Too much speculation becomes worrying but the presence of different elements in stars and the subsequent understanding of stellar evolution is supported by the observations of atomic and molecular spectra within the light coming from the photosphere of stars. 

The birth of a protostar and its life as a pre-main-sequence star, its descent to the main sequence and death, starting with a red giant leading to planetary nebula and ending in white and black dwarfs. This sequence varies with mass... 

Sketch the HR diagram and identify the four major classes of stars. A star with radius 7 x 109 m has a surface temperature of 10000 K. Plot its position on the HR diagram and indicate a birth line for this star. 

Birth lines The track of stars as they evolve from red giants onto the main sequence of the Herzprung-Russell diagram. 

Rutherford (1929) noted that the abundance ratio 235u/238U is 0.007 now and was 0.3 at the birth of the Solar System, and he pointed out that extrapolation still further back to the (mean) epoch of nucleosynthesis would give the production ratio the assumption at that time was that elements had been synthesized in the Sun and that the planets were formed out of material extracted from the Sun by a passing star. Reasoning that the production ratio was likely to be a reasonably small number (< 10, say), he deduced that the mean nucleosynthesis epoch could not have been more than 4.3 Gyr before the formation of the Solar System. 

These collisions result in high enough temperatures of 45 million degrees Fahrenheit and pressures to fuse the hydrogen into helium and the birth of a star takes place. As the star feeds on this supply of hydrogen, four hydrogen nuclei are fused into one heavier helium nucleus. 

And although om natural and personal detector, the retina, shows us a tranquil sky, with a light scatter of stars across it, striking only by its steadfast inaction, the new sky revealed by telescopes and satellites sensitive to invisible emissions is one of tempest. It is animated by the birth of clouds, the creative explosion of stars and the transition of the Universe from opacity to transparence. Human perception now contemplates regions once forbidden to it. 

The Sun does not contain more than 2% of heavy elements (by mass). This meagre total has nevertheless sufficed to engender and perpetuate life and consciousness, as we may deduce from our own existence and the composition of our star. But since the birth of the Sun 4.6 billion years ago, the stars have not laid down their tools. What will life and consciousness be like when they reach 3%, or 10% ... 

Fig. 6.1. Stellar nursery in the constellation of Orion. Molecular clouds A and B were detected by their radio emissions. They appear to have given birth to several generations of stars (la, It and Ic).

The first faltering steps of molecular astronomy were intimately related to the birth of modern spectroscopy. It was the discovery at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the Sun and stars are composed of the same elements as the Earth, which led astronomers to the idea that spectroscopic techniques can be used to observe cosmic chemical processes. 

Fig. 8.1. Life expectancy of stars with solar metaUicity. A star s lifetime depends principally on its mass at birth and varies httle with initial metalhcity. (From Riosi 2000.)...

Stars do not aU work at the same rate, and nor do they produce the same nuclear species. Depending on its mass, and to a lesser extent its metalhcity at birth, each star delivers its specific batch of atoms to the surrounding region of space, thus making its... 

The second parameter, the initial mass function, serves to weight the contributions of stars with different masses in proportion to their number within a single generation. The initial mass function has been established empirically and appears to remain fairly stable in time. The number of stars of mass M is inversely proportional to the cube of M, to a first approximation, provided we exclude the slightest of them M < Mq). Looking at the mass distribution at birth, once established, we notice immediately how rare the massive stars are. For every star born at 10 Mq, there are a thousand births of solar-mass stars. 

Smaller elements found in nature, such as hydrogen and helium, formed shortly after the birth of the universe, some 14 billion years ago. Heavier elements such as oxygen, iron, and gold formed in the nuclear reactions of stars such as the Sim during their lifetimes or, in the case of the heaviest elements, in nuclear reactions that occur at the end of a large star s lifetime, when it explodes and becomes what astronomers call a supernova. 

When were the atoms that became our solar system synthesized The star formation rate in the galaxy was highest early in galactic history and a lot of heavy elements were produced. However, most of this material was subsequently incorporated into stars, and much of that has been permanently sequestered. On the other hand, much of the recently synthesized material has not yet been incorporated into a new generation of stars. This balance between synthesis and sequestration means that the birth dates of the elements that became the solar system are roughly evenly distributed over the 7.5 Gyr of galactic history prior to the solar system s birth (Clayton, 1988). 

In Revelation we read "He that overcometh will I give the morning star." This "star" is SOL, perfected by LUNA, -Solomon by the Queen of Sheba. This bright morning star is the same as that which announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds. It is Venus, or Love, the "fulfillment of all," as Christ himself declared. This star is fundamentally the Sulphur (Sol) of the Sages, and it reaches the state (plane, or planet) of Venus (Copper) just AFTER the White Work, and from this one goes on to Gold. 

Prepare yourself for a strange journey as The Stars of Heaven unlocks the doors of your imagination with thought-provoking mysteries, puzzles, and problems on topics ranging from stellar anatomy to the birth of solar systems. A resource for science-fiction writers, an adventure and education for beginning physics and astronomy students, each chapter is a world of paradox and mystery. 

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