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NMP88

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66 views

NMP88

Uploaded by

jafasoh293
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity.[1] The nearest star to Earth is the Sun.

Many other stars are


visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent
stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper
names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations.
The observable universe contains an estimated 1022 to 1024 stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all
within the Milky Way galaxy.[2]

A star's life begins with the gravitational collapse of a gaseous nebula of material largely comprising hydrogen, helium, and trace
heavier elements. Its total mass mainly determines its evolution and eventual fate. A star shines for most of its active life due to
the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core. This process releases energy that traverses the star's interior
and radiates into outer space. At the end of a star's lifetime as a fusor, its core becomes a stellar remnant: a white dwarf, a neutron
star, or—if it is sufficiently massive—a black hole.

Stellar nucleosynthesis in stars or their remnants creates almost all naturally occurring chemical elements heavier
than lithium. Stellar mass loss or supernova explosions return chemically enriched material to the interstellar medium. These
elements are then recycled into new stars. Astronomers can determine stellar properties—including mass, age, metallicity (chemical
composition), variability, distance, and motion through space—by carrying out observations of a star's apparent
brightness, spectrum, and changes in its position in the sky over time.

Stars can form orbital systems with other astronomical objects, as in planetary systems and star systems with two or more stars.
When two such stars orbit closely, their gravitational interaction can significantly impact their evolution. Stars can form part of a
much larger gravitationally bound structure, such as a star cluster or a galaxy.

Etymology
The word "star" ultimately derives from the Proto-Indo-European root "h₂stḗr" also meaning star, but further analyzable as h₂eh₁s-
("to burn", also the source of the word "ash") + -tēr (agentive suffix). Compare Latin stella, Greek aster, German Stern. Some
scholars[who?] believe the word is a borrowing from Akkadian "istar" (Venus), however, this is in doubt[citation needed]. "Star" is cognate
(shares the same root) with the following words: asterisk, asteroid, astral, constellation, Esther.[3]

Observation history
See also: Stars in astrology

People have interpreted patterns and images in the stars since


ancient times. This 1690 depiction of the constellation of Leo, the lion, is by Johannes Hevelius.
[4] [5]

Historically, stars have been important to civilizations throughout the world. They have been part of religious
practices, divination rituals, mythology, used for celestial navigation and orientation, to mark the passage of seasons, and to define
calendars.

Early astronomers recognized a difference between "fixed stars", whose position on the celestial sphere does not change, and
"wandering stars" (planets), which move noticeably relative to the fixed stars over days or weeks.[6] Many ancient astronomers
believed that the stars were permanently affixed to a heavenly sphere and that they were immutable. By convention, astronomers
grouped prominent stars into asterisms and constellations and used them to track the motions of the planets and the inferred
position of the Sun.[4] The motion of the Sun against the background stars (and the horizon) was used to create calendars, which
could be used to regulate agricultural practices.[7] The Gregorian calendar, currently used nearly everywhere in the world, is a solar
calendar based on the angle of the Earth's rotational axis relative to its local star, the Sun.

The oldest accurately dated star chart was the result of ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 BC.[8] The earliest known star
catalogues were compiled by the ancient Babylonian astronomers of Mesopotamia in the late 2nd millennium BC, during the Kassite
Period (c. 1531 BC – c. 1155 BC).[9]
Stars in the night sky

The first star catalogue in Greek astronomy was created by Aristillus in approximately 300 BC, with the help of Timocharis.[10] The
star catalog of Hipparchus (2nd century BC) included 1,020 stars, and was used to assemble Ptolemy's star catalogue.
[11]
Hipparchus is known for the discovery of the first recorded nova (new star).[12] Many of the constellations and star names in use
today derive from Greek astronomy.

Despite the apparent immutability of the heavens, Chinese astronomers were aware that new stars could appear.[13] In 185 AD, they
were the first to observe and write about a supernova, now known as SN 185.[14] The brightest stellar event in recorded history was
the SN 1006 supernova, which was observed in 1006 and written about by the Egyptian astronomer Ali ibn Ridwan and several
Chinese astronomers.[15] The SN 1054 supernova, which gave birth to the Crab Nebula, was also observed by Chinese and Islamic
astronomers.[16][17][18]

Medieval Islamic astronomers gave Arabic names to many stars that are still used today and they invented numerous astronomical
instruments that could compute the positions of the stars. They built the first large observatory research institutes, mainly to
produce Zij star catalogues.[19] Among these, the Book of Fixed Stars (964) was written by the Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman
al-Sufi, who observed a number of stars, star clusters (including the Omicron Velorum and Brocchi's Clusters)
and galaxies (including the Andromeda Galaxy).[20] According to A. Zahoor, in the 11th century, the Persian polymath scholar Abu
Rayhan Biruni described the Milky Way galaxy as a multitude of fragments having the properties of nebulous stars, and gave
the latitudes of various stars during a lunar eclipse in 1019.[21]

According to Josep Puig, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah proposed that the Milky Way was made up of many stars that
almost touched one another and appeared to be a continuous

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