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The Human Eyes and Nocturnal Animal Eyes, Daydreaming, and Stardust: A Stellar Explanation

Raizza T. Dauz Article 7, August 7, 2017.                                                       A Space Odyssey

First, let us all look at the picture below where the part of the human eyes and nocturnal animal eyes are shown.

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light and pressure. As a sense organ, the mammalian eye allows vision. Human eyes help provide a three dimensional, moving image, normally coloured in daylight. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth. The human eye can differentiate between about 10 million colors and is possibly capable of detecting a single photon.

Similar to the eyes of other mammals, the human eye’s non-image-forming photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina receive light signals which affect adjustment of the size of the pupil, regulation and suppression of the hormone melatonin and entrainment of the body clock.

The Connection to the Stars in the Night Sky:

1. The human eye, specifically the pupils, dilate or expand in response to mere thoughts of light or dark. Most people don’t spend much time pondering the diameter of their pupils. The fact is that we don’t have much control over our pupils, the openings in the center of the irises that allow light into the eyes. Short of chemical interventions—such as the eyedrops ophthalmologists use to widen their patients’ pupils for eye exams—the only way to dilate or shrink the pupils is by changing the amount of available light. Switch off the lamp, and your pupils will widen to take in more light. Step out into the sun, and your pupils will narrow.

Mechanical though they may be, the workings of pupils are allowing researchers to explore the parallels between imagination and perception. In a recent series of experiments, University of Oslo cognitive neuroscientists Bruno Laeng and Unni Sulutvedt began by displaying triangles of varying brightness on a computer screen while monitoring the pupils of the study volunteers. The subjects’ pupils widened for dark shapes and narrowed for bright ones, as expected. Next, participants were instructed to simply imagine the same triangles. Remarkably, their pupils constricted or dilated as if they had been staring at the actual shapes. Laeng and Sulutvedt saw the same pattern when they asked subjects to imagine more complex scenes, such as a sunny sky or a dark room.

However, this is not related to why you see stars in your vision. That’s another explanation. There are two main causes of seeing stars in your vision. One is the result of a blow to your head. This type of injury can scatter nerve signals in your brain and affect your vision temporarily.The other cause is a problem with your retina. If that’s the reason, it can be triggered by something other than an injury.

2. There are animals—nocturnal animals that relies on the stars in the night sky. To cite an example, Dung Beetle is one of them. The Dung Beetle uses the milky way galaxy for navigation at night.The beetle uses the polarized light from the sun for navigation, but what did they do at night? They thought it could be the moon, but what about moonless nights? It turned out that they were using the milky way, which was confirmed by taking them to a planetarium. The scientists found out that the beetles used the visual cues of the milky way instead of something like the magnetic field. And it is because of their eyes.

Night Vision (On human eyes)

Night vision is the ability to see in low light conditions. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range. Humans have poor night vision compared to many animals, in part because the human eye lacks a tapetum lucidum.

Since stars typically emit light with shorter wavelengths, the light from stars will be in the blue-green color spectrum. Therefore, using red light to navigate would not desensitize the receptors used to detect star light. Using red light for night vision is less effective for people with red–green color blindness, due to their insensitivity to red light.

Night Vision (On animal eyes)

Nocturnal mammals have rods with unique properties that make enhanced night vision possible. The nuclear pattern of their rods changes shortly after birth to become inverted. In contrast to conventional rods, inverted rods have heterochromatin in the center of their nuclei and euchromatin and other transcription factors along the border. In addition, the outer layer of cells in the retina (the outer nuclear layer) in nocturnal mammals is thick due to the millions of rods present to process the lower light intensities. The anatomy of this layer in nocturnal mammals is such that the rod nuclei, from individual cells, are physically stacked such that light will pass through eight to ten nuclei before reaching the photoreceptor portion of the cells. Rather than being scattered, the light is passed to each nucleus individually, by a strong lensing effect due to the nuclear inversion, passing out of the stack of nuclei, and into the stack of ten photorecepting outer segments. The net effect of this anatomical change is to multiply the light sensitivity of the retina by a factor of eight to ten with no loss of focus.

Second, let us talk about how daydreaming is related to stars.

Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one’s immediate surroundings, during which a person’s contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.

There are many types of daydreams, and there is no consistent definition among psychologists, however the characteristic that is common to all forms of daydreaming meets the criteria for mild dissociation. Negative aspects of daydreaming were stressed after human work became dictated by the motion of the tool. As craft production was largely replaced by assembly line that did not allow for any creativity, no place was left for positive aspects of daydreaming. It not only became associated with laziness, but also with danger. For example, in the late 19th century, Toni Nelson argued that some daydreams with grandiose fantasies are self-gratifying attempts at “wish fulfillment”. Still in the 1950s, some educational psychologists warned parents not to let their children daydream, for fear that the children may be sucked into “neurosis and even psychosis”.

Freudian psychology interpreted daydreaming as expression of the repressed instincts similarly to those revealing themselves in nighttime dreams. Like nighttime dreams, daydreams, also, are an example of wish-fulfillment (based on infantile experiences), and are allowed to surface because of relaxed censorship. He pointed out that, in contrast to nighttime dreams, which are often confusing and incoherent, there seems to be a process of “secondary revision” in fantasies that makes them more lucid, like daydreaming. The state of daydreaming is a kind of liminal state between waking (with the ability to think rationally and logically) and sleeping. They stand in much the same relation to the childhood memories from which they are derived as do some of the Baroque palaces of Rome to the ancient ruins whose pavements and columns have provided the material for the more recent structures.

Imagination is usually thought of as “a private and subjective experience, which is not accompanied by strongly felt or visible physiological changes,” Laeng says. But the new findings, published in Psychological Science, challenge that idea. The study suggests that imagination and perception may rely on a similar set of neural processes: when you picture a dimly lit restaurant, your brain and body respond, at least to some degree, as if you were in that restaurant.

The new experiments complement popular methods for studying consciousness by providing visual stimulation to participants without their awareness. Joel Pearson, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, explains that mental imagery research takes the opposite approach, allowing subjects conscious awareness of a mental image without the accompanying stimulation. Perhaps by combining the two approaches, scientists can better understand how consciousness works.

Third, how are we connected to stardust?

Did you ever wonder where you came from? That is the stuff that’s inside your body like your bones, organs, muscles…etc.  All of these things are made of various molecules and atoms. But where did these little ingredients come from? And how were they made? The answer to these questions will take us back to a time long ago when the universe was much different than it is now. However, the physics was the same.

“We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff,” Sagan famously stated in one episode.

His statement sums up the fact that the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our bodies, as well as atoms of all other heavy elements, were created in previous generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago. Because humans and every other animal as well as most of the matter on Earth contain these elements, we are literally made of star stuff, said Chris Impey, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona.

“All organic matter containing carbon was produced originally in stars,” Impey told Life’s Little Mysteries. “The universe was originally hydrogen and helium, the carbon was made subsequently, over billions of years.”

How star stuff got to Earth

When it has exhausted its supply of hydrogen, it can die in a violent explosion, called a nova. The explosion of a massive star, called a supernova, can be billions of times as bright as the Sun , according to “Supernova,” (World Book, Inc., 2005). Such a stellar explosion throws a large cloud of dust and gas into space, with the amount and composition of the material expelled varying depending on the type of supernova.

A supernova reaches its peak brightness a few days after it first occurred, during which time it may outshine an entire galaxy of stars. The dead star then continues to shine intensely for several weeks before gradually fading from view, according to “Supernova.”

The material from a supernova eventually disperses throughout interstellar space. The oldest stars almost exclusively consisted of hydrogen and helium, with oxygen and the rest of the heavy elements in the universe later coming from supernova explosions, according to “Cosmic Collisions: The Hubble Atlas of Merging Galaxies,” (Springer, 2009).

“It’s a well-tested theory,” Impey said. “We know that stars make heavy elements, and late in their lives, they eject gas into the medium between stars so it can be part of subsequent stars and planets (and people).”

Since stardust atoms are the heavier elements, the percentage of star mass in our body is much more impressive. Most of the hydrogen in our body floats around in the form of water. The human body is about 60% water and hydrogen only accounts for 11% of that water mass. Even though water consists of two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen, hydrogen has much less mass. We can conclude that 93% of the mass in our body is stardust. Just think, long ago someone may have wished upon a star that you are made of.

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An Interview with the Chief of the Planetarium Unit.

Raizza T. Dauz Article 6, August 3, 2017.                                                       A Space Odyssey

I conducted an interview with Ms. Maria Rosario C. Ramos, Senior Weather Specialist, Chief of the Planetarium Unit of Space Sciences and Astronomy Section from Research and Development and Training Division of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA)

I asked her several questions regarding about my topic for this blog. I hope you’ll learn something after you read this article. Let’s get started.

Why do dead stars still shine bright in the night sky?

“Light travels rapidly so, the brightness of these dead stars are already from a long time ago. For example, the star is already 9 billion years old and is already dead, the light that travels rapidly from the outer space to the earth is already 9 billion years ago”, Ms. Ramos answered concisely. Meaning, some of the stars that we see in the night sky, since light travels rapidly, are already from the past. We still see the star in our naked eyes but the true faith of that star in the outer space is already dead.

“We call them White Dwarf because when they die, because they burned all of the hydrogen they once used as nuclear fuel. A White Dwarf is also called as Degenerated Dwarf. Meaning, there’s no brightness in the star because it has already evolved.” She added. So, to answer the question, ‘Are the stars that we see in the night sky are already dead?’ It’s possible that we do. We just see them as what they once were.

Why aren’t there any green stars?

“There are green stars but, we cannot see the green in it because of the Color Spectrum present in the light travelling to Earth”, Ms. Ramos said. In the Color Spectrum, the green color is in the middle of colors: red, blue, yellow, and violet. The star in the outer space that shows color green, also shows the other colors from the said spectrum. “If the star in the outer space is green, it’s not present in our naked eyes because color green is not a dominant color. Red, blue, yellow, and violet dominates green and therefore, can be seen by our eyes”, Ms. Ramos explained.

For the next question, I asked her professional opinion about the astronomical department of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) since, here in the Philippines, PAGASA is the only weather and space reporter unit of the government. NASA delivers high-definition images of the outer space with the use of high-end technology that has evolve through time with their space voyage and exploration. I often question myself, ‘Does the outer space really look like this?’ The follow-up question was if you were to compare the equipment used by NASA and the equipment used by PAGASA, what are the possible contributions or projects that the PAGASA can deliver to us millennials and future generations of the country that are interested in astronomy?

According to her, the lens that the International Space Station (ISS) uses before are not as high-definition as they are now. We can compare the images if we have time to do so. But, as the time goes by and as the technology enhance even more, we can now see the outer space in a clear view. NASA has so many space explorations by the different technologies that they use and capture images that serves as a window for us to know what’s in the outer space by the researchers assigned in those explorations.

“The government supports the projects of PAGASA in general” She said. “But, if I were to compare the equipment of NASA and PAGASA, NASA uses high-end equipment than us because it’s not that powerful therefore, we have different astronomers here who has different specializations. They also make their own innovations like telescopes and such. Unlike in Thailand, the princess there supports Astronomy so the high-end equipment that the astronomers should use are well-supported. Because they want to deliver good quality images for the people that are interested or not even interested in Astronomy”, Ms. Ramos added.

PAGASA has a project of acquiring a Radio Telescope. A radio telescope is a form of radio receiver used in Astronomy. In contrast to an “ordinary” telescope, which receives visible light, a radio telescope “sees” radio waves emitted by radio sources, typically by means of a large parabolic (“dish”) antenna, or arrays of them.

Radio telescope is more of a research because of this. It needs data gathering for starters since, you use the radio telescope for scanning and observing the sky that’s why we have researchers.

Stars in general, or Astronomy has more to offer, stored for us that are not yet discovered by the equipment used by the ISS and NASA. Ms. Ramos discussed the Ethnoastronomy to me since I’m part of the Millenials or Generation Z. Ethnoastronomy is the study of the knowledge, interpretations, and practices of contemporary cultures regarding celestial objects or phenomena. The future generation should be educated with ethnoastronomy to know more about Astronomy because ethnoastronomy is not in science books. Now, if you lay down on the grass, do some star-gazing with your friends, you can actually explain this answers to them and enjoy the beautiful scenery that our planet actually stored for us to see.

Where to contact Ms. Ramos: https://www.facebook.com/oirasorsomar

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Star Constellations and How to Understand Them

Raizza T. Dauz

Article 5, July 31, 2017.                                                        A Space Odyssey

What is Constellation?

First of, a constellation is simply defined as a recognizable group of conspicuous stars that are placed together as imaginary patterns or outlines on the celestial sphere. They are usually typified or embodies human-made constructions and often represent animals, mythological people or gods, mythological creatures, or manufactured devices.

Based on the important astronomical need to formally define the placement of all celestial objects in the entire sky, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) ratified and recognized the 88 modern constellations in 1928. Therefore, any given point in a celestial coordinate system can now be unambiguously assigned to any modern constellation. Furthermore, many astronomical naming systemsgive the constellation where a given celestial object is found along with a designation in order to convey an approximate idea of its location in the sky. e.g. The Flamsteed designation for bright stars consists of a number and the genitive form of the constellation name.

How to Understand the Constellations?

To find constellations you’ll need a star chart, these give you a snapshot of what the night sky will look like at any one time and at any one location. The star chart above shows you how the night sky will look above most of the United States at 8 pm in late January. These maps may seem rather baffling and confusing at first but they’re actually very simple to use. To simplify matters the chart above only shows constellations but normally they will also indicate prominent stars, galaxies, nebulae and planets.

The first thing you may notice is that east and west seem to be the wrong way round, but if you imagine holding the chart above your head, which is how they are designed to be used, it becomes apparent this is not the case. The outer edge of the chart indicates the horizon, so the further the stars are from the edge the higher they will be in the sky.

The center of the chart shows the stars and constellations that will be directly overhead, so the map above shows you that the constellations of Auriga, Taurus and Perseus will be directly above you at that time.

To find your bearings it is helpful to find Polaris, the star which always points north. First find the famous Big Dipper, which is part of the constellation Ursa Major and visible all year in the Northern hemisphere, draw an imaginary line through the outer two stars of the Big Dipper’s bowl and you will come to Polaris, which is the brightest star in the constellation of Ursa Minor. In the Southern hemisphere it is helpful to find the Southern Cross, which always points south, this is done by drawing a line through the bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri.

Once you have found your bearings you can start searching out constellations and the objects they contain. Using the chart above if you look south you’ll notice the constellation of Orion, perhaps the most recognizable constellation of them all. As well as the Orion nebula the constellation also contains the bright supergiant stars Betelgeuse and Rigel. Overhead and to the west you’ll find the Andromeda constellation which contains the Andromeda Galaxy, the most distant object that can be viewed with the naked eye. There are many other fascinating objects to look out for and a star chart will be essential in guiding you around the night sky.

Stars do not stay fixed in the night sky, as the Earth rotates they change position, as a result the night sky will look different at midnight from what it did several hours before or after. Most constellations are also seasonal, meaning that ones that are visible in winter may not be visible in summer and vice-versa, so sky charts usually come in seasonal versions. Constellations may also be drawn slightly differently on each chart and it’s also worth noting that there are separate charts for the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

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Technical Jargons

Raizza T. Dauz

Article 4, July 16, 2017                                                      A Space Odyssey

Angular Size and Distance
 The apparent size of an object in the sky, or the distance between two objects, measured as an angle. Your index finger held at arm’s length spans about 1°, your fist about 10°.

Astronomical Unit 
The average distance from Earth to the Sun, slightly less than 93 million miles.

Celestial Coordinates
 A grid system for locating things in the sky. It’s anchored to the celestial poles (directly above Earth’s north and south poles) and the celestial equator (directly above Earth’s equator). Declination and right ascension are the celestial equivalents of latitude and longitude.

Circumpolar Denotes an object near a celestial pole that never dips below the horizon as Earth rotates and thus does not rise or set.

Constellation A distinctive pattern of stars used informally to organize a part of the sky. There are 88 official constellations, which technically define sections of the sky rather than collections of specific stars.

Culmination The moment when a celestial object crosses the meridian and is thus at its highest above the horizon.

Declination (Dec.) The celestial equivalent of latitude, denoting how far (in degrees) an object in the sky lies north or south of the celestial equator.

Double Star (Binary Star) Two stars that lie very close to, and are often orbiting, each other. Line-of-sight doubles are a consequence of perspective and aren’t physically related. Many stars are multiples (doubles, triples, or more) gravitational bound together. Usually such stars orbit so closely that they appear as a single point of light even when viewed through professional telescopes.

Ecliptic The path among the stars traced by the Sun throughout the year. The Moon and planets never stray far from the ecliptic.

Ephemeris A timetable with celestial coordinates that indicates where a planet, comet, or other body moving in relation to background stars will be in the sky. Its plural is ephemerides (pronounced eff-uh-MEHR-ih-deez).

Galaxy A vast collection of stars, gas, and dust, typically 10,000 to 100,000 light-years in diameter and containing billions of stars (from galaxias kuklos, Greek for “circle of milk,” originally used to describe our own Milky Way).

Light Pollution A glow in the night sky or around your observing site caused by artificial light. It greatly reduces how many stars you can see. Special light-pollution filters can be used with your telescope to improve the visibility of celestial objects.

Magnitude A number denoting the brightness of a star or other celestial object. The higher the magnitude, the fainter the object. For example, a 1st-magnitude star is 100 times brighter than a 6th-magnitude star.

Occultation When the Moon or a planet passes directly in front of a more distant planet or star. A grazing occultation occurs if the background body is never completely hidden from the observer.

Parallax The apparent offset of a foreground object against the background when your perspective changes. At a given instant, the Moon appears among different stars for observers at widely separated locations on Earth. Astronomers directly calculate the distance to a nearby star by measuring its incredibly small positional changes (its parallax) as Earth orbits the Sun.

Planisphere (Star Wheel) A device that can be adjusted to show the appearance of the night sky for any time and date on a round star map. Planispheres can be used to identify stars and constellations but not the planets, whose positions are always changing.

Refractor A telescope that gathers light with a lens. The original design showed dramatic rainbows, or “false color,” around stars and planets. Most modern refractors are achromatic, meaning “free of false color,” but this design still shows thin violet fringes around the brightest objects. The finest refractors produced today are apochromatic, meaning “beyond achromatic.” They use expensive, exotic kinds of glass to reduce false color to nearly undetectable levels.

Star A massive ball of gas that generates prodigious amounts of energy (including light) from nuclear fusion in its hot, dense core. The Sun is a star.

Star Cluster A collection of stars orbiting a common center of mass. Open clusters typically contain a few hundred stars and may be only 100 million years old or even less. Globular clusters may contain up to a million stars, and most are at least 10 billion years old (almost as old as the universe itself).

Star Diagonal A mirror or prism in an elbow-shaped housing that attaches to the focuser of a refractor or compound telescope. It lets you look horizontally into the eyepiece when the telescope is pointed directly overhead.

Star Party A group of people who get together to view the night sky. Astronomy clubs often hold star parties to introduce stargazing to the public.

Supernova A star ending its life in a huge explosion. In comparison, a nova is a star that explosively sheds its outer layers without destroying itself.

Transparency A measure of the atmosphere’s clarity — how dark the sky is at night and how blue it is during the day. When transparency is high, you see the most stars. Yet crystal-clear nights with superb transparency often have poor seeing.

Variable Star A star whose brightness changes over the course of days, weeks, months, or years.

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Stellar Nucleosynthesis: A Better Understanding

Raizza T. Dauz Article 3, July 10, 2017.                                                        A Space Odyssey

What is a Stellar Nucleosynthesis?

Stellar nucleosynthesis is the process by which the natural abundances of the chemical elements within stars change due to nuclear fusion reactions in the cores and their overlying mantles. Stars are said to evolve (age) with changes in the abundances of the elements within. Core fusion increases the atomic weight of elements and reduces the number of particles, which would lead to a pressure loss except that gravitation leads to contraction, an increase of temperature, and a balance of forces.

A star loses most of its mass when it is ejected late in the star’s stellar lifetimes, thereby increasing the abundance of elements heavier than helium in the interstellar medium. The term supernova nucleosynthesis is used to describe the creation of elements during the evolution and explosion of a presupernova star, a concept put forth by Fred Hoyle in 1954.

A stimulus to the development of the theory of nucleosynthesis was the discovery of variations in the abundances of elements found in the universe. Those abundances, when plotted on a graph as a function of atomic number of the element, have a jagged sawtooth shape that varies by factors of tens of millions.

This suggested a natural process other than random. Such a graph of the abundances can be seen at History of nucleosynthesis theory article. Of the several processes of nucleosynthesis, stellar nucleosynthesis is the dominating contributor to elemental abundances in the universe.

A second stimulus to understanding the processes of stellar nucleosynthesis occurred during the 20th century, when it was realized that the energy released from nuclear fusion reactions accounted for the longevity of the Sun as a source of heat and light.

The fusion of nuclei in a star, starting from its initial hydrogen and helium abundance, provides it energy and the synthesis of new nuclei is a byproduct of that fusion process. This became clear during the decade prior to World War II. The fusion-produced nuclei are restricted to those only slightly heavier than the fusing nuclei; thus they do not contribute heavily to the natural abundances of the elements. Nonetheless, this insight raised the plausibility of explaining all of the natural abundances of elements in this way. The prime energy producer in our Sun is the fusion of hydrogen to form helium, which occurs at a solar-core temperature of 14 million kelvin.

The most important reactions in stellar nucleosynthesis:

Deuterium fusion

The proton–proton chain

The carbon–nitrogen–oxygen cycle

The triple-alpha process

The alpha process

Lithium burning: a process found most commonly in brown dwarfs

Carbon-burning process

Neon-burning process

Oxygen-burning process

Silicon-burning process

The R-process

The S-process

The Rp-process

The P-process

Hydrogen Fusion

Hydrogen fusion (nuclear fusion of four protons to form a helium-4 nucleus) is the dominant process that generates energy in the cores of main-sequencestars. It is also called “hydrogen burning”, which should not be confused with the chemical combustion of hydrogen in an oxidizing atmosphere. There are two predominant processes by which stellar hydrogen fusion occurs: proton-proton chain and the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen (CNO) cycle. Ninety percent of all stars, with the exception of white dwarfs, are fusing hydrogen by these two processes.

Helium Fusion

Main sequence stars accumulate helium in their cores as a result of hydrogen fusion, but the core does not become hot enough to initiate helium fusion. Helium fusion first begins when a star leaves the red giant branch after accumulating sufficient helium in its core to ignite it. In stars around the mass of the sun, this begins at the tip of the red giant branch with a helium flash from a degenerate helium core and the star moves to the horizontal branch where it burns helium in its core. More massive stars ignite helium in their cores without a flash and execute a blue loop before reaching the asymptotic giant branch. Despite the name, stars on a blue loop from the red giant branch are typically yellow giants, possibly Cepheid variables. They fuse helium until the core is largely carbon and oxygen. The most massive stars become supergiants when they leave the main sequence and quickly start helium fusion as they become red supergiants. After helium is exhausted in the core of a star, it will continue in a shell around the carbon-oxygen core.

In all cases, helium is fused to carbon via the triple-alpha process. This can then form oxygen, neon, and heavier elements via the alpha process. In this way, the alpha process preferentially produces elements with even numbers of protons by the capture of helium nuclei. Elements with odd numbers of protons are formed by other fusion pathways.

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The Basics of Star Names and Stellar Formation

Raizza T. Dauz Article 2, July 10, 2017.                                                        A Space Odyssey

From the previous article, I discussed the appearance and life cycle of a star. Here, I’ll discuss their formation and how the astronomers make star names.

Stars are giant, luminous spheres of plasma. There are billions of them — including our own sun — in the Milky Way Galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies in the universe. So far, we have learned that hundreds also have planets orbiting them.  

The Basics of Star Names

Ancient cultures saw patterns in the heavens that resembled people, animals or common objects — constellations that came to represent figures from myth, such as Orion the Hunter, a hero in Greek mythology. Astronomers now often use constellations in the naming of stars. The International Astronomical Union, the world authority for assigning names to celestial objects, officially recognizes 88 constellations. Usually, the brightest star in a constellation has “alpha,” the first letter of the Greek alphabet, as part of its scientific name. The second brightest star in a constellation is typically designated “beta,” the third brightest “gamma,” and so on until all the Greek letters are used, after which numerical designations follow.

A number of stars have possessed names since antiquity — Betelgeuse, for instance, means “the hand (or the armpit) of the giant” in Arabic. It is the brightest star in Orion, and its scientific name is Alpha Orionis. Also, different astronomers over the years have compiled star catalogs that use unique numbering systems. The Henry Draper Catalog, named after a pioneer in astrophotography, provides spectral classification and rough positions for 272,150 stars and has been widely used of by the astronomical community for over half a century. The catalog designates Betelgeuse as HD 39801.

Since there are so many stars in the universe, the IAU uses a different system for newfound stars. Most consist of an abbreviation that stands for either the type of star or a catalog that lists information about the star, followed by a group of symbols. For instance, PSR J1302-6350 is a pulsar, thus the PSR. The J reveals that a coordinate system known as J2000 is being used, while the 1302 and 6350 are coordinates similar to the latitude and longitude codes used on Earth.

Let’s go with the Stellar Formation, shall we?

A star develops from a giant, slowly rotating cloud that is made up entirely or almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Due to its own gravitational pull, the cloud behind to collapse inward, and as it shrinks, it spins more and more quickly, with the outer parts becoming a disk while the innermost parts become a roughly spherical clump. According to NASA, this collapsing material grows hotter and denser, forming a ball-shaped protostar. When the heat and pressure in the protostar reaches about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), atomic nuclei that normally repel each other start fusing together, and the star ignites. Nuclear fusion converts a small amount of the mass of these atoms into extraordinary amounts of energy — for instance, 1 gram of mass converted entirely to energy would be equal to an explosion of roughly 22,000 tons of TNT.

As a bonus, here’s a picture of a collection of stars taken by NASA. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust —the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 2,000 light years away in the constellation Carina, contains a central cluster of huge, hot stars, called NGC 3603.

Credit: NASA, ESA, R., F. Paresce, E. Young, the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team

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Stars: Appearance and Life Cycle

Raizza T. Dauz Article 1, July 2, 2017.                                                        A Space Odyssey

Stars has been defined by Merriam-Webster as a self-luminous gaseous spherical celestial body of great mass which produces energy by means of nuclear fusion reactions.

Stars are cosmic energy engines that produce heat, light, ultraviolet rays, x-rays, and other forms of radiation. They are composed largely of gas and plasma, a superheated state of matter composed of subatomic particles. Though the most familiar star, our own sun, stands alone, about three of every four stars exist as part of a binary system containing two mutually orbiting stars. No one knows how many stars exist, but the number would be staggering. Our universe likely contains more than 100 billion galaxies, and each of those galaxies may have more than 100 billion stars. Yet on a clear, dark night Earth’s sky reveals only about 3,000 stars to the naked eye. Humans of many cultures have charted the heavens by these stars.

Let’s talk about their appearances:

Some stars have always stood out from the rest. Their brightness is a factor of how much energy they put out–known as luminosity–and how far away from Earth they are.

Stars in the heavens may also appear to be different colors because their temperatures are not all the same. Hot stars are white or blue, whereas cooler stars appear to have orange or red hues.

Stars may occur in many sizes, which are classified in a range from dwarfs to supergiants. Supergiants may have radii a thousand times larger than that of our own sun.

Hydrogen is the primary building block of stars. The gas circles through space in cosmic dust clouds called nebulae. In time, gravity causes these clouds to condense and collapse in on themselves. As they get smaller, the clouds spin faster because of the conservation of angular momentum—the same principle that causes a spinning skater to speed up when she pulls in her arms.

Building pressures cause rising temperatures inside such a nascent star, and nuclear fusion begins when a developing young star’s core temperature climbs to about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius).

How about their Life Cycle?

Young stars at this stage are called protostars. As they develop, they accumulate mass from the clouds around them and grow into what are known as main sequence stars. Main sequence stars like our own sun exist in a state of nuclear fusion during which they will emit energy for billions of years by converting hydrogen to helium.

Stars evolve over billions of years. When their main sequence phase ends they pass through other states of existence according to their size and other characteristics. The larger a star’s mass, the shorter its lifespan will be.

As stars move toward the end of their lives much of their hydrogen has been converted to helium. Helium sinks to the star’s core and raises the star’s temperature—causing its outer shell to expand. These large, swelling stars are known as red giants.

The red giant phase is actually a prelude to a star shedding its outer layers and becoming a small, dense body called a white dwarf. White dwarfs cool for billions of years, until they eventually go dark and produce no energy. At this point, which scientists have yet to observe, such stars become known as black dwarfs.

A few stars eschew this evolutionary path and instead go out with a bang—detonating as supernovae. These violent explosions leave behind a small core that may become a neutron star or even, if the remnant is large enough, a black hole.

[stars-and-silver-linings]

The Author

I know of nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.                                                                                             -    Vincent Van Gogh

I’m Raizza Talib Dauz. 18 years old. Born on December 10, 1998 at Dr. Jesus C. Delgado Memorial Hospital. I’m the eldest child of Ariel Dela Cruz Dauz and Mary Chille Talib Dauz . My younger sister’s name is Resse Yxie Talib Dauz and we’re living with my grandmother, Mariam Karim Talib.  

Due to constant bullying, I had to transfer from different public schools from 1st grade to 4th grade. Then, I resided to St. James College of Quezon City (SJCQC) from 5th grade until my senior year in high school. I got special awards when I was in 5th and 6th grade. I was the “Manunula ng Taon” in both years and was awarded during graduation. To add nostalgia to my old self, I was an introvert. Though, I had to get out of my comfort zone in order to make friends in 5th grade. It was good. But, I’m an ambivert now because I’m a mix of introvert and extrovert

If I were to describe my high school life, it was the height of my roller coaster emotions and of course, puberty. I found out who my real friends were and found out what I really wanted to do in my life that time. Ever since I was a kid, I really love looking at the stars. I guess I daydream a lot that’s why I chose this topic. But at the end of my senior year, I never got any awards. I never graduated with flying colors, academically but I kind of did because I gained the people who that I can really trust and is always there for me through thick and thin.

Due to my creative writing hobby in high school and my old self joining the young writer’s club as my extra-curricular activity in high school, I am now a 3rd year student from Polytechnic University of the Philippines, currently taking up Bachelor of Arts in Journalism at the College of Communication. All is going well right now… I think.

[stars-and-silver-linings]

Introduction

A Space Odyssey Stars, according to NASA, are the most widely recognized astronomical objects and represent the most fundamental building blocks of the galaxies. The age, distribution, and composition of the stars in a galaxy trace the history, dynamics, and evolution of that galaxy. Moreover, stars are responsible for the manufacture and distribution of heavy elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and their characteristics are intimately tied to the characteristics of the planetary systems that may coalesce (form together) about them. Consequently, the study of the birth, life, and death of stars is central to the field of astronomy.

This page is dedicated to Stars. However, I may go over to other celestial bodies as this page lives on and will still be focused on Stars. 

They say that when you look at a star, you’re looking at another version of yourself (who lives in another universe, parallel universe) in the eye. Ironically, as a person who lives in the city, it’s hard to stargaze every night (since it’s rare to see stars in the city) when all you see is a smog and the moon.

I made this for people who loves stars like I do, for people who loves to stargaze when they have a chance to do so. I made this because I also want to educate myself even more about stars. Facts, formations, constellations, their age, classifications, etc. are going to be some of the topics that I will be discussing here. 

To make this page even more interesting, I made a playlist that will make you also want to look at the stars. Some of the songs here are the ones that I always listen to whenever I stargaze and just lie on the roof of my house. Most of the songs in the playlist are literally about stars, galaxy, and just space in general.

Van Gogh’s artwork, Starry Night is part of my inspiration on choosing Stars as my topic for this blog because his painting made a big impact on me that made me love the night, the stars, and the moon when I was in 5th grade. I can vividly remember how intrigued I am when my teacher in art class was discussing every detail of his works back then. 

Why stars and silver linings?

I believe that every cloud has a silver lining. Even if it’s at night. No matter how dark the road is you’re walking on, you’ll find your own silver lining. Your own happiness. I found mine while stargazing. It was euphoric. I hope my readers will find their own silver linings like I did. 

I’m just going to leave this quote here:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

                                                                        -    Oscar Wilde