Star birth in clouds of gas and dust are called nebulae.
Star Birth
- medium-sized stars – last for about 10 billion years.
- small stars may last for 200 billion years.
- big stars – it have short, fierce lives of 10 million years.
- stars that begins life in clouds of gas and dust are called nebulae.
Nebulae
- inside nebulae – gravity creates dark clumps called EGGs – each clump contains the seeds of a family stars.
Inside nebulae
(Wikipedia: EGGS – evaporating gaseous globules.)
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Smaller clumps – don’t get very hot, so they eventually fizzle out.
If larger clump – reaches 10’°c million in its core,
hydrogen atoms begin to join together in nuclear reactions
and the baby star starts to glow.
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- in a medium-sized star such as our Sun, the heat of burning hydrogen pushes gas out as fiercely as gravity pulls inwards, and the star becomes stable.
- as gravity squeezes – these globules, they shrink and form hot balls of gas and dust – see below.
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Back to Stars and Galaxies page / next to Giant Star page.
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