What are stars and where do they get their light from?

Answer 1

Stars are huge balls of very hot, mostly hydrogen gas, like our Sun. The extreme pressure at the centers of stars causes hydrogen nuclei to fuse together to form helium nuclei, in a process called nuclear fusion. The energy released by fusion is what causes a star to glow.

Answer 2

The stars are basically enormous accumulations of plasma that generate energy, mostly in the form of heat and light, but also radiations such as X, gamma and others sort. Plasma is Tha so called 4th. state of the matter. The commonlykonwn states are, gas, liquid and solid. Plasma is a form of ionizated gas at a temperature of millions of degrees centigrade, the gas generally is hidrogen, the most abundant substance in the universe. At these temperatures, the gas molecules(protons) have a huge kinetic energy, that maekes them collide in to each other and unite, creatin another gas, known as Helium( the word comesfrom the greek ¨helios¨, wich means sun, because this element was first discovered by spectrography on the suface of the sun). This¨collision¨process, called nuclear fusion, transforms the kinetic energy into energy in the form of radiation, heat, light, etc., and is the most powerful energy creating process known in nature.

Answer 3

A star very simply is compressed hydrogen,

The pressure in the centre is so great it forces the hydrogen to fuse together into helium which has less mass than hydrogen.
E=MC2
That lost mass is released as energy in the form of photons which can be seen as light and felt as heat

That is the very basic explanation to your question

Answer 4

Giant Balls of Gas, Great Balls of Fire!

There are about 10^22 stars in 10^11 galaxies, But they are not all the same age and not all of the same size, temperature or luminosity as one another, New stars are constantly being made and old ones becoming spent and exhausted or exploding as supernovas.

There are many stellar types, as catalogued in the Morgan-Keenan Stellar Classification. (See link). Main sequence stars (of which our Sun is one) fuse hydrogen in their core, at great extremes of pressure and temperature to make helium.

1 atom of helium is more massive than 1 atom of hydrogen, but a bit less massive than the two atoms of hydrogen that need to fuse to make one atom of helium. The mass lost in the reaction is converted to energy which we experience as heat and light, 93 million miles away.

500 million tonnes of hydrogen are fused every second, The sun has been doing this non-stop for 5 billion years now, It is currently 75% hydrogen and 25% helium. It is anticipated it will run out of hydrogen to fuse in about 5 billion years' time.

It will then evolve into a Red Giant star, start to fuse helium to make carbon, get much hotter and much larger (far more mass is lost and turned into energy in helium fusion than in hydrogen fusion) and this phase will last for about 100 million years before it then cools into a White Dwarf star about the size of the earth,

Red Giants and White Dwarfs are both categories in the Morgan-Keenan Spectral Classification: given below in descending order of size, temperature and brightness. The Sun is classified as a G2 star.

Class / Temperature / Star colour / Mass / Radius / Luminosity (all compared to the Sun = 1)

O 30,000 - 60,000 K Bluish ("blue") 60 15 1,400,000
B 10,000 - 30,000 K Bluish-white ("blue-white") 18 7 20,000
A 7,500 - 10,000 K White with bluish tinge ("white") 3.2 2.5 80
F 6,000 - 7,500 K White ("yellow-white") 1.7 1.3 6
G 5,000 - 6,000 K Light yellow ("yellow") 1.1 1.1 1.2
K 3,500 - 5,000 K Light orange ("orange") 0.8 0.9 0.4
M 2,000 - 3,500 K Reddish orange ("red") 0.3 0.4 0.04

Answer 5

A star is a huge amount of extreme hot gas.
Its gravitation keeps the gas together as a sphere.
Everything that is extreme hot, emits light. (It is called temperature radiation). So a star emits light itself.
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