Exploring the Universe

An introduction to the universe.

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Why is the sky blue?

As starlight passes through a dust cloud, dust particles scatter light. Dust particles scatter blue light more, letting red light through. This is called reddening, or de-blueing. 

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Gamma-ray bursts are the result of supernovae from really massive stars that leave behind black holes. 

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SETI:
Search 
for 
Extra‐Terrestrial
 Intelligence

It looks
 for 
electromagnetic 
evidence 
of intelligence
 elsewhere
 in
 the 
universe.
 Nothing has been found to date. 

[oldworldbluues]

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citrusloomi:

Celestial Trails over Greece.

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A pulsar is a neutron star that beams radiation along a magnetic axis that is not aligned with the rotation axis. 

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The Big Bang. 

[spacettf]

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spacettf:

The Big Dipper by lacomj on Flickr.

The Big Dipper

[chikkus]

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chikkus:

Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?

Timon: Pumbaa, I don’t wonder; I know.

Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?

Timon: They’re fireflies. Fireflies that, uh… got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.

Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.

Timon: Pumbaa, with you, everything’s gas.

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Quasars are small, extremely luminous, extremely distant active galactic nuclei. 

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What is Dark Matter?

Something that doesn't emit light and doesn't interact with other matter in collisions. We see evidence for dark matter in clusters of galaxies. 

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Massive star death. 

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We are stardust.

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Bright blue O type stars live very short lives of about 10 million years. Faint, red, small stars like M live a long time of about 100 billions of years. The Sun will live about 10 billion years, half of which are used up. 

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Hubble 3D

[a--static--starr]

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A star will live as long as it has "fuel" to burn. This depends on how much mass there is in a star, and how fast it is burning it away. Massive stars burn fuel so quickly it doesn't matter that they have more fuel. They "burn bright, die young."

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Starlike objects too small to start fusion are brown dwarfs. They are also known as failed stars. Brown dwarfs cool down and will eventually fade out of sight.

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