Where do the stars get the light from?

Answer 1

Stars make it.

Under enormous pressures from gravity they merge hydrogen atoms together to make helium atoms and release energy in the process. That energy is light.

The light takes tens of thousands of years to make its way to the surface of the star and there it is released as light which can be seen.

Answer 2

Stars are massive, glowing balls of hot gases, mostly hydrogen and helium.
Stars Are Nuclear Furnaces. In their super-hot cores, which are at many millions of degrees stars generate their own energy by nuclear reactions. This newly released energy flows from the stars' hot interiors to the cooler surface layers, where the energy is radiated into space. We see that radiation and say that stars shine !


Stars Do Not Shine Forever. Simple reasoning explains why. Stars are of finite size. For instance, the Sun's size is 100 times that of the Earth. This is big, but it's still finite. Finite size means that stars have only finite amounts of nuclear fuel. Eventually they will exhaust their fuel and fade.

You can compare this to driving your car. One tank of fuel lets you drive only a certain number of miles. When the fuel is exhausted, the car will stop.

How Long Do Stars Shine? That depends on how much mass they have.

Mass determines the amount of nuclear fuel stars have at birth. Mass also determines how bright stars are, or how rapidly they consume fuel.

The greater a star's mass, the greater is the amount of its nuclear fuel. However, the more massive stars are fuel guzzlers. They shine much brighter than the less massive stars and use up their fuel very fast. Hence, the more massive stars have shorter lives.

The most massive stars -- those with masses 25 to 50 times that of the Sun -- race through their lives in just a few million years. The Sun will last for about 10 billion years. Stars less massive than the Sun will last even longer.

Answer 3

The merger of Hydrogen atoms to form Helium atoms emits photons. The stars were originally giant planets that began to spin under there own gravities pressure.The spin created extreme heat which caused the Hydrogen atoms to merge together and form Helium. This merger called nuclear fusion caused the giant ball of Hydrogen to turn on, giving us light.

Answer 4

Light and heat and other forms of energy come from the nuclear fusion happening inside the stars, including our sun. Photons travel inside for long time till they reach the surface and go into space around the stars.

Answer 5

When a nuclear bomb explodes, for several seconds the light from it makes everything brilliant white, and if you and your buddy are watching from 20 miles away, you would be blinded. If you had eye protection and looked at your buddy you would see his bones like an x-ray.

Well, the sun and the other stars shine like that all the time, not just for seconds. And main sequence stars like the sun will go on shining like that for billions of years.

That is unbelievable, but nevertheless true.

Answer 6

Stars are so massive. So the weight of star would make the star shrinking. Therefor the pressure of that would burst the atoms in the core into particles. Actually what happens is that four hydrogen atoms will join together and make a helium atom. And the extra mass would turn into energy. thereby stars release energy. And that energy appear to us as photons and we see them shining.

Answer 7

Stars produce light by fusing hydrogen into helium.

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/distance.htm

http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v32n2/aas196/285.htm

Answer 8

They produce their own light, heat and other kinds of radiation through a process called Nuclear Fusion. That also prevents them from collapsing under their own gravity.

Answer 9

They're on fire, like the sun. The sun is a star, but it's not big compared to others. It's just closer.

Answer 10

same place as the light in your eyes ;)