Stars & the Universe

In this chapter you will:

● describe the Sun and galaxies, including the Milky Way
● learn about the relative separation of planets, stars and galaxies
● describe how stable stars (such as the Sun) are powered by the
thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen
● describe the life cycle of stars like our Sun and more massive stars
● learn that the redshift of light from distant galaxies supports the BB theory
● learn that this redshift can be described by Hubble’s law, which can be used
to work out the age of the Universe
Getting started
What are the differences between planets and stars?

Where does the Sun get its energy?

What colour are stars?

What is a galaxy and what is the name of ours?

What makes the Sun shine?

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Getting started

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What’s in the Sun?
Aristotle believed the Sun was made of ether –
a perfect substance that glows forever.

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What’s in the Sun?
In 1613, Galileo Galilei observed sunspots on
the Sun and these “imperfections” showed that
the Sun could not be made of ether.

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What’s in the Sun?
During the Industrial Revolution, a lot of
coal was burned in steam engines. This
made scientists wonder whether the Sun
was a giant lump of coal. But calculations
showed that in that case the Sun would
have shined for less than 1500 years,
which was shorter than recorded history.

However, efforts to understand steam

power led to the principle
of conservation of energy.

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What’s in the Sun?
Hermann von Helmholtz believed the kinetic
energy of meteorites colliding with the Sun
could be the source of energy.

What is the problem in this theory?

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What’s in the Sun?
The total mass of meteorites was too
small and they were not moving fast
enough to provide the required energy.

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What’s in the Sun?
Others imagined that the Sun was once
much bigger, so that it only just fitted inside
the Earth’s orbit. But the gravitational energy
released when it collapsed to its present size
could only have provided enough energy for
100 mln years, which was not enough for the
evolution of different species on the Earth.

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What’s in the Sun?
The radioactivity was discovered, and
Einstein showed that mass can be
transformed into energy. This led scientists
to work out that the Sun is powered by
thermonuclear fusion, though a fully formed
theory did not appear until 1939.

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The Sun
Average / medium mass star, up of ~75% H,
24% He, ~1% other elements.

H at the surface radiates energy:

● ~40% energy = visible light
● ~50% energy = infrared radiation
● ~10% energy = ultraviolet

The Earth’s atmosphere absorbs UV

radiation. What protects us from this harmful
UV radiation?

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The Sun
Stars are powered by nuclear reactions
that release energy. Stable stars (like our
Sun) are powered by the nuclear fusion
(thermonuclear fusion) of H into He. This
makes the Sun shine.

What is the state of matter in the Sun?

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Proton-proton cycle

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The Sun
It is so hot inside the Sun that matter
exists as plasma (+ions and electrons).
Although the Sun produces gamma rays
because of the nuclear fusion process,
collisions with the plasma mean that it
takes ~100 000 years for that energy to
reach the Sun’s surface. The energy is
spread over a big surface (photosphere),
so the temperature is lower at the Sun’s
surface (5800 K vs ~15 000 000 K).

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The Sun
The Earth orbits the Sun at a distance
of ~150 mln km, which is within the
habitable zone – water can exist in
the liquid form.

Why is it important?

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The Sun
The Sun has a mass of 2 x 1030 kg.
This is referred to as the solar mass
as it provides a simple way of
comparing the mass of other stars to
the mass of our Sun.

A star with 8 solar masses would have

eight times the mass of the Sun.

https://youtu.be/PF__UZx_GHA

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Colours
What colours are the stars? Why?

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Colours

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Stars & Galaxies
A light-year = 3 x 108 m/s x 365.25 days x 24 hours x 3600 s ~ 9.5 x 1015 m

Proxima Centauri is ~4.2 ly, or ~4 x 1013 km away from the Earth,

or 7000 times further from the Sun than Pluto is.

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Stars & Galaxies
The force of gravity pulls stars
together in groups called
galaxies. Our Solar System is in
the Milky Way galaxy with about
200 bln stars.

It takes our Solar System about

225 mln years to travel once
around the centre of the galaxy.

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Ms Irina Bode, 2022-2023 22
How to measure distances in space?
Astronomers have many
techniques to measure distances
in space. For nearby stars within
our galaxy, they can use parallax.

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Experience parallax
1. Stretch out an arm in front
of you.
2. Stick up your thumb.
3. Close one eye and open
the other one.
4. Swap over which is closed
and open.
5. Your thumb should appear
to move from side to side
against the background
which should be at least
2 arms lengths away.

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How to measure distances in space?
When a telescope is pointed at a nearby
star in the summer, it appears to be at
location X against the background stars.
When the telescope is pointed in the
same direction 6 mo later, the
astronomer would need to swing the
telescope through twice the parallax
angle in order to get the telescope back
onto the star which appears to have
moved to position Y against the
background stars.

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A star is born
A protostar is the first step in star
formation. Stars form from interstellar
clouds of gas and dust that contain H
called molecular clouds, which are both
cold and dense enough for star formation.

The Orion Nebula in the Milky Way is ~1350

light-years away and it is the closest region
of star formation to Earth. It is visible to the
naked eye in the night sky just south of
Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion

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A star is born
The collapse of a clump of molecular cloud
due to gravitational attraction starts a
series of energy transfers. As the force of
gravity pulls the H gas molecules closer
together, their potential energy is
transferred to kinetic energy. As the
molecules collide, their kinetic energy is
transferred into thermal energy.
The clump contracts into a spinning sphere
of super-hot gas known as a protostar.
“Pillars of Creation”
A photo of interstellar gas in the Eagle Nebula
Hubble Telescope

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Ms Irina Bode, 2022-2023 28
A star is born
A protostar continues to grow by pulling
in more material from the molecular cloud.
Its final mass determines what happens to it.

A protostar becomes stable when the inward

force of gravitational attraction is balanced by
an outward force due to the high temperature
of a star caused by nuclear fusion.

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Questions
What causes the centre of a star to warm up when it forms?

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Questions
In the process of collapsing the gravitational potential
energy in the molecular cloud is turned into kinetic
energy. Collisions between particles causes kinetic
energy to be transferred to thermal energy.

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Questions
What is nuclear fusion?
Why can nuclear fusion only occur at high temperatures?

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Questions
Nuclear fusion is where light nuclei fuse
(join) together to create a heavy nucleus,
but some mass turns into energy.
The nuclei all have the same positive
charge so need to be moving fast enough
to overcome the electrostatic repulsion.

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Stable stars
Hot bodies radiate heat and this radiation
exerts a force called radiation pressure.
The hotter the object is, the higher the
radiation pressure. The very high
temperature of a star leads to a radiation
pressure that acts outwards, making the star
expand. This acts in the opposite direction to
the force of gravity pulling the star inwards.
When these forces are balanced, the star is
stable and stays the same size.

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Main sequence
Continuous and distinctive band of
stars that appears on plots of stellar
colour versus brightness. These
colour-magnitude plots are known as
Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams after
their co-developers. Stars on this band
are known as main-sequence stars.

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The Sun’s evolution
Our Sun is 4.6 bln years old and is
half-way through its time as a stable
main sequence star. It will become a
red giant in ~5 bln years from now
when it will expand beyond Earth’s
orbit. Eventually, the core will collapse
into a white dwarf star that cannot
exceed a mass of ~1.4 solar masses
and typically has a radius of 1000 km.

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The Sun’s evolution
When the Sun becomes white dwarf,
its radius will be ~1% of its present
radius, which means it will shrink to
about the size of the Earth. Though it
has a white hot surface (hence the
colour), it is not hot enough inside to
fuse heavier elements, so it will cool to
become a black dwarf. Radiation
pressure will blow away its outer shell
to create a planetary nebula.
Cat’s Eye Nebula

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The evolution of bigger stars
Bigger stars = exceeding 8 solar masses

Like all stars, they begin life as a protostar

before entering a stable period. The core
of massive stars gets so hot that the nuclei
of heavier elements can fuse. The star is
hot enough for the fusion of lighter
elements to continue in shells further
from the core, as shown in Figure.

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The evolution of bigger stars
The outer shell then expands into a red
supergiant. However, it is not possible to
make elements heavier than iron by
nuclear fusion, so a star with at least 8
times the mass of the Sun ends its cycle
of nuclear reactions with iron at its core
surrounded by shells of progressively
lighter elements.

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The evolution of bigger stars
Once all the fuel has run out, the star
collapses one final time and then explodes
as a supernova. This provides energy
required to create elements heavier than
iron and push them into space as a
nebula, along with lighter elements. The
nebula provides the building blocks for
possible future stars and solar systems.
A supernova will briefly outshine its galaxy.

Crab Nebula, associated

with the 1054 supernova

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What’s next?
What happens after a supernova depends on
the mass of the core that remains.

Less than ~3 solar masses => neutron star

The force of gravity is so strong than electrons
and protons are forced together to create
neutrons.

https://youtu.be/udFxKZRyQt4

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What’s next?
What happens after a supernova depends on
the mass of the core that remains.

More than ~3 solar masses => black hole

The force of gravity is even stronger, so a core
will continue collapsing until it becomes so
dense that not even light can escape.

Supermassive black hole at the core of Messier 87,

supergiant elliptical galaxy, also known as Virgo A

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Life cycle of a star

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Stars are the sources for everything, even us
The Big Bang created H, He and a trace of
Li, so stars have produced the rest. This
means the Solar System contains stardust.
The Sun is a third generation star, which
means that it includes matter that has been
through two previous stars, including one
that ended in a supernova explosion.

In fact, we may have atoms in our bodies

that come from many supernova explosions.

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The Universe
When has the concept of the Universe
been discovered?

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The Universe
On New Year’s Day, 1925 – the day
when Edwin Hubble’s scientific paper
was presented that ended the Great
Debate and provided that the Universe
is bigger than just the Milky Way.

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The Universe
Astronomers had observed what looked
like whirlpools of gas and dust inside our
galaxy. But when Hubble focused the
new Mount Palomar telescope onto them
he realised they were other galaxies and
dwarf galaxies. We are part of the local
group of galaxies, which is part of the
Virgo Supercluster.

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Spectroscopy:
learning about stars from their starlight

Spectroscopy, or the scientific study

of spectra, began with Isaac Newton
in 1666. He discovered that a prism
disperses white light into the colour
of the visible spectrum.

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Spectroscopy:
learning about stars from their starlight

In 1814, Joseph Fraunhofer noticed

how many dark lines cross the
spectrum of sunlight.

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Spectroscopy:
learning about stars from their starlight

The dark line are the wavelengths of light

missing from the sunlight because the
cool gas in the Sun’s atmosphere absorbs
them. A spectrum with these absorption
lines is known as an absorption
spectrum, similar to a barcode.

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Redshift
The spectra of different elements were
studied in experiments on Earth.
However, when astronomers looked for
the same spectra in distant galaxies,
they discovered that they are
redshifted – shifted towards the red
end of the spectrum.
a. On Earth; b. From a distant galaxy
Does it mean that the light become red?
Why does the redshift happen?

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Redshift
Light shift towards longer wavelengths
because the wave is stretched out and
the wavelength is increased.

Absorption lines in Figure that are

normally in the blue part of the spectrum
can shift into the green part of the
spectrum. But the pattern stays the same.
a. On Earth; b. From a distant galaxy

https://youtu.be/ikgRZt1BSyk

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The Doppler effect
https://youtu.be/fUPOxK55nm0

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The Doppler effect

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Why is it important?
The Doppler effect is a property of all
waves, including light. Light from galaxies
that are moving away from us is redshifted.
This turned out to be the first important
clue that the Universe is expanding and
suggesting that the galaxies must have
been closer together is the past. This led
to the theory that the Universe had a
beginning – the Big Bang theory.

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Hubble’s law
Astronomers use the Doppler effect to
work out how fast galaxies are moving
away from us or towards us. The speed of
the galaxies is directly proportional to the
amount of redshift.

In 1921, Edwin Hubble plotted the

recession speed of galaxies – how fast
they are moving away – against their
distance from is.
The Hooker telescope that was
used by Edwin Hubble

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Hubble’s law
He got a graph like in Figure.

What does it show?

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Hubble’s law
The speed at which galaxies are moving
away from us is directly proportional to
their distance from us.

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Hubble’s law
v = H0 d

v – recession speed of galaxies

d – distance from us
H0 – Hubble constant, the gradient
of the graph

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Hubble’s law
v = H0 d

v – recession speed of galaxies

d – distance from us Estimate for the age of the Universe
H0 – Hubble constant, the gradient
of the graph

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Hubble’s law
Current H0 = 2.2 x 10-18 per second

The reciprocal of the Hubble constant is

known as Hubble time, because it can be
used to work out the age of the Universe.

tUniverse = 4.5 x 1017 s = 14.4 x 109 years

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The beginning
At the beginning, the Universe was
unimaginably hot and dense but it has
been expanding and cooling ever since.

The early Universe was so hot that neutral

atoms could not form. They would
instantly ionise. Light was continuously
scattered off the charged particles.

By analogy, light is scattered in fog, which

is why we cannot see very far into it.

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The beginning
Once the Universe was about 379k years
old, and about the size of the Milky Way,
the temperature dropped to 3000 K and
neutral atoms formed. Light was no longer
scattered and the Universe became
transparent.

It was like the fog suddenly disappeared

and the air became clear. However, the
expansion caused the light to redshift over
time.

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The beginning
Once the Universe was about 379k years
old, and about the size of the Milky Way,
the temperature dropped to 3000 K and
neutral atoms formed. Light was no longer
scattered and the Universe became
transparent.

It was like the fog suddenly disappeared

and the air became clear. However, the
expansion caused the light to redshift over
time.

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CMBR: cosmic microwave background radiation
The wavelight of this light, in the
microwave region of the electromagnetic
spectrum, was predicted in 1948. In 1964,
the US scientists Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson built a radio telescope but
struggled to eliminate noise. It did not
matter where in the sky the pointed their
telescope, the noise was constant. So,
they assumed that it was a problem with
their equipment. Robert Wilson & Arno Penzias

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CMBR: cosmic microwave background radiation
However, it turned out that they had
accidentally discovered microwave
radiation. They were looking at light that
had left the surface of last scattering
when the universe was only 379k years
old and had been redshifted so that its
wavelengths was now more than 1000
times longer. CMBR has a temperature of
2.726 K. Penzias and Wilson were
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978.

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CMBR: cosmic microwave background radiation

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Expansion
Despite the name, the Big Bang was not
an explosion. It is the expansion of the
space between the galaxies.

Universe = balloon
Expansion = blowing the balloon

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Supernovae help
Observations in 1998 of type 1a
supernovae in a very distant galaxy
suggest that the expansion of the
Universe is accelerating. Type 1a
supernovae occur when a white dwarf star
in a binary star system pulls in material
from its companion star until it reaches a
certain mass and explodes.

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Supernovae help
The important point is that these
supernovae always have the same
luminosity, therefore they act as a
‘standard candle’. By recording how
bright the supernova appears to be and
knowing how bright it really is, it is
possible to work out how far away it is.
Scientists are still not able to explain
why the expansion is speeding up, but
‘dark energy’ might be responsible.

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Ms Irina Bode, 2022-2023 71