THE STARS, GALAXIES, CONSTELLATIONS, AND THE UNIVERSE

Stars are heavenly bodies with so much central heat and pressure that energy is generated in their interiors by nuclear reactions. The
most familiar stars visible in the night sky are balls of gas with solar composition, and sizes usually a few times smaller or larger than
the sun.
Stars are named and catalogued by several systems. When Ptolemy's Almagest was passed on to the Arab astronomers, many of the
stars ended up with Arabic names. Since Al is the common Arabic article, many stars start their names with Al: e.g., Alel, Altair, and
Alcor. Stars are cataloged in approximate order of brightness using Greek letters. Thus, the brightest star in the constellation is called
Alpha Centauri. Fairer stars or stars with unusual properties are often known by English letters or catalog numbers such as T Tauri or
B.D. 4+/-4048.
Composition
• A spectroscope is used to study the composition of stars. As the stars become older, their composition, surface temperature, and
luminosity change.
Proper Motion
•There is a very little movement among stars. Some stars show proper motions of 1 second or more of arc per year, others may show
seconds of arc per 100 years.
Radial Velocity
•This type of motion shows whether a star is moving in a line away or toward the earth. From the spectral lines coming from starlight,
radial velocity can be taken. Some spectral lines shift toward the red or to the blue of the spectrum.
Size
•The size of a star may be determined by interferometry. The technique called speckle photography obtains an image on the surface of
a big star. This image is fed into a computer to reassemble several short exposures into a single composite.
Stellar distance
•Astronomers generally express distances between stars in parsecs. The distance in parsec is equal to one divided by the parallax
angle.

STAR GROUPINGS
Open Star Clusters
•They are moderately close-knit, irregularly shaped groupings of stars. They usually contain 100 to 1.000 members and are about 2 to
20 pc in diameter.
Associations
• They are cousins of open clusters. They often have fewer stars but are larger in size and have a looser structure. Some large
associations include an open star cluster within them. They may have 10 to a few hundred members and diameters of about 10 to 100
pc. They are rich in very young stars like O and B stars or Tauri stars.
Globular Star
•Chesters are quite different from the two other types. They are more massive, tightly packed, symmetrical, and very old. They
typically contain from 20,000 to several million stars, although many of these stars crowd too close to be resolved by earth-based
telescopes. Typical diameters of central concentrations range from 5 to 25 pc.
WHAT IS A GALAXY?
-Galaxies are concentrations of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter. They come
in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are fated to collide, like the Milky Way
and Andromeda.
Astronomers classify galaxies into three major categories: elliptical, spiral and
irregular. These galaxies span a wide range of sizes, from dwarf galaxies
containing as few as 100 million stars to giant galaxies with more than a trillion
stars.
Ellipticals
-which account for about one-third of galaxies observed, vary from nearly circular to very elongated. They possess comparatively
little gas and dust, contain older stars, and are not actively forming stars anymore. The largest and rarest of these, called giant
ellipticals, are about 300,000 light-years across.
Spiral galaxies
-appear as flat, blue-white disks of stars, gas, and dust with yellowish bulges in their centers. These galaxies are divided into two
groups: normal spirals and barred spirals. In barred spirals, the bar of stars runs through the central bulge. The arms of barred spirals
usually start at the end of the bar instead of from the bulge.
Irregular galaxies
- which have very little dust, are neither disk-like nor elliptical. Astronomers often see irregular galaxies as they peer deeply into the
universe, which is equivalent to looking back in time.
Aside from these three classic categories, astronomers have also identified many unusually shaped galaxies that seem to be in a
transitory phase of galactic development. These include those in the process of colliding or interacting, and those with active nuclei
ejecting jets of gas.
In the late 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin made the surprising discovery of dark matter. She was studying how galaxies spin when she
realized the vast spiral Andromeda Galaxy seemed to be rotating strangely.
In an apparent violation of Newton and Kepler’s Laws, the material at the galaxy’s edges was moving just as fast as the material near
the center, even though most of the mass she could see was concentrated at the center. Some extra non-visible mass, dubbed dark
matter, appeared to be holding the galaxy together. She soon discovered that a huge halo of dark matter was present in galaxy after
galaxy that she examined.

THE MILKY WAY

The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band
of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The milky way -gets its name
from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera who sprayed milk across the sky. In other parts of the world, our galaxy goes by other
names. In China it’s called the “Silver River,” and in the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, it’s called the “Backbone of Night.
*The milky galaxy was born about 12.7 billions years ago and has been growing since. According to scientists about 7 new stars are
born in the galaxy every single years The distance of the solar system from the galactic center is about 27,000 light years.
*The milky way travels through space at a speed of 343 miles per second with regards the cosmic microwave background radiation .
The galaxy's core has a supermassive black hole contains the mass of roughly 4.3 million suns.
This is what the Milky Way might look like from the side. It's like a giant disk with a bump in the middle!
CONSTELLATIONS
-If you take time to study the start for a while, you will find out that they fall into patterns and design imposed by our mind. Sky watchers
during the ancient times perceived stellar patters and called such pattern constellations. They are usually named after ancient Gods
Heroes, Animals or Mythological beings. The names of the oldest known constellation originated about 300 B.C. in the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley of Mesopotamia. The names of constellations used today have been handed down from the Greek and Romans.