Stars
Stars. Every sighted human being can see them when the clouds get out of the way and city light don’t blind us to their soft light. They are beautiful and somewhat awe-inspiring.
I’ve never known anyone who didn’t like stars. There are songs and poems rhapsodizing about them. I once heard someone remark that if the stars were visible only once a year, the whole world would stay awake that night to see them. But they are there all the time, so we take them for granted.
From my vantage point, stars all look pretty much alike. Some look brighter than others, which I always chalked up to distance. Reading up on them, I learned they are different sizes, colors, and intensity. And scientists say they are all in motion. According to Wikipedia, stars are every color of the rainbow. In fact, there are star colors that don’t appear in the rainbow, such as red and brown. Apparently that piece of trivia can be verified with strong telescopes.
What are stars made of? People who write for the internet say stardust is composed of the same basic chemicals we are - though how they know that is beyond my understanding. Scientists also say the average life span of a star is about ten billion years.
Who among us hasn’t gazed up at the night sky and wondered how many stars there are? In the middle ages, thousands of stars were catalogued. As viewing devices improved, people began to see more stars, further out than previously thought--and that still happens. Every time there’s an advance in what I’ll call telescopes, we turn them on and realize there are a newly visible multitude of stars “out there”.
The latest popular figure is 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion, calculated by a team of stargazers from the Australian National University. The number was drawn up based on a survey of one strip of sky, rather than trying to count every individual star. That number was then multiplied by the number of similar sized strips needed to cover the entire sky and then multiplied again out to the edge of the visible universe.
The head of the study conceded there were likely to be many million more stars in the universe but the 70 sextillion figure was the number visible within range of modern telescopes.
The actual number of stars could be infinite he said. The universe is so big, light from the other side of the universe "hasn't reached us yet," The Age newspaper quoted him as saying. Asked if he believed the huge scale of the universe meant there was intelligent life out there somewhere, he told the paper: "Seventy thousand million million million is a big number ... it's inevitable."
I’m no scientist, but I can’t imagine looking up at the sky on a clear night without recognizing there is an intelligent power far beyond our limited understanding managing this vast universe.
I’ve never known anyone who didn’t like stars. There are songs and poems rhapsodizing about them. I once heard someone remark that if the stars were visible only once a year, the whole world would stay awake that night to see them. But they are there all the time, so we take them for granted.
From my vantage point, stars all look pretty much alike. Some look brighter than others, which I always chalked up to distance. Reading up on them, I learned they are different sizes, colors, and intensity. And scientists say they are all in motion. According to Wikipedia, stars are every color of the rainbow. In fact, there are star colors that don’t appear in the rainbow, such as red and brown. Apparently that piece of trivia can be verified with strong telescopes.
What are stars made of? People who write for the internet say stardust is composed of the same basic chemicals we are - though how they know that is beyond my understanding. Scientists also say the average life span of a star is about ten billion years.
Who among us hasn’t gazed up at the night sky and wondered how many stars there are? In the middle ages, thousands of stars were catalogued. As viewing devices improved, people began to see more stars, further out than previously thought--and that still happens. Every time there’s an advance in what I’ll call telescopes, we turn them on and realize there are a newly visible multitude of stars “out there”.
The latest popular figure is 7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion, calculated by a team of stargazers from the Australian National University. The number was drawn up based on a survey of one strip of sky, rather than trying to count every individual star. That number was then multiplied by the number of similar sized strips needed to cover the entire sky and then multiplied again out to the edge of the visible universe.
The head of the study conceded there were likely to be many million more stars in the universe but the 70 sextillion figure was the number visible within range of modern telescopes.
The actual number of stars could be infinite he said. The universe is so big, light from the other side of the universe "hasn't reached us yet," The Age newspaper quoted him as saying. Asked if he believed the huge scale of the universe meant there was intelligent life out there somewhere, he told the paper: "Seventy thousand million million million is a big number ... it's inevitable."
I’m no scientist, but I can’t imagine looking up at the sky on a clear night without recognizing there is an intelligent power far beyond our limited understanding managing this vast universe.
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