are stars small planets?

Question

are the stars we see at night in the sky small planets?

Answer 1

A star is any massive gaseous body in outer space, just like the Sun. Unlike a planet, a star generates energy through nuclear fusion and therefore emits light. All stars except the Sun appear as shining points in the nighttime sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere and their distance from us. The Sun is also a star, but it is close enough to Earth to appear as a disk instead, and to provide daylight.

umm..thats what wikipedia says..but its right!

Answer 2

It helps if we define our terms.

Astronomers tend to call things that emit radiation 'stars'. The radiation doesn't come from nowhere... stars produce it by compressing gasses with massive gravities and performing nuclear fusion. Just about all the points of light you see at night are stars, and even the 'milky way' path across the sky is just collections of stars that are too far to see individually.

A planet, on the other hand, is a chunk of material that orbits a star or something that was once a star, and that is big enough to have cleared most of the stuff out of its way but not big enough to cause fusion to occur. Some planets are essentially made of the same stuff as stars, they're just not big enough to become stars themselves. And pretty much all solid planets are made of pieces of stuff that was once in a star, but clearly isn't any more. The astronomer Carl Sagan used to be pretty fond of pointing out that we were all made of 'stardust'.

Some of the light specks you may see at night may be planets in our solar system. Venus, for example, used to be called 'The Morning Star'. These aren't true stars, though, because they're just reflecting the light of the sun. To a lesser extent, some asteroids and comets do this too. But all these things are WAY too small to see even reflected light from in other solar systems, except with the most powerful of telescopes.

Some of the light specks you may see in the sky are also not single stars, but entire galaxies. Like the diffuse light from the 'milky way', there are many galaxies that are so far away that the sum total of their millions of stars are no different to the naked eye than a much nearer single star. The Andromeda galaxy is one example visible to the naked eye (it is the nearest, largest, and is actually moving toward us) which can be found near the constellation Pegasus.

Answer 3

Put differently:

Some of the bright points you see in the night sky on a starry night, are, actually, some of the Jovian or Giant planets. Since they're so far it is hard to discern whether they're planets or stars with the naked eye.

But if you use a telescope, things look quite different. So perhhaps what you thought was a star is in fact Jupiter, or Saturn. Mars and Venus are some night regulars.

Answer 4

NOPE.

We are in a Solar System comprised of one Star (our Sun) and nine planets.

Our Star is one of many Stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.

Each Star that you see in the sky at night might have from 0 to 10 (or more) planets with moons circling around them. However, we cannot see these other planets because of the brightness of the stars themselves.

Stars are burning masses of hot gas and very hot, molten metals.

Planets and moons are not burning hot like the stars, though some may indeed be very hot.

In the Milky Way Galaxy there are estimated to be 1000 Billion stars.

Beyond the Milky Way Galaxy there are thousands of other galaxies with more billions of stars in each one, and all kinds of planets and moons circling around each one of those stars.

Refer to ASTRONOMY, by Ian Ridpath, DK Publishing, NY,NY.
for more information.

Answer 5

A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma. Stars group together to form galaxies, and they dominate the visible universe. The nearest star to the Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth, including daylight. Other stars are visible in the night sky, when they are not outshone by the Sun. A star shines because nuclear fusion in its core releases energy which traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Without stars, life on Earth and most atomic elements would not exist.

Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity and motion through space. The total mass of a star is the principal determinant in its evolution and eventual fate. Other characteristics of a star that are determined by its evolutionary history include the diameter, rotation, movement and temperature. A plot of the temperature of many stars against their luminosities, known as a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram), allows the current age and evolutionary state of a particular star to be determined.

A star begins as a collapsing cloud of material that is composed primarily of hydrogen along with some helium and heavier trace elements. Once the stellar core is sufficiently dense, some of the hydrogen is steadily converted into helium through the process of nuclear fusion. The remainder of the star's interior carries energy away from the core through a combination of radiation and convective processes. These processes keep the star from collapsing upon itself and the energy generates a stellar wind at the surface and radiation into outer space.[1]

Once the hydrogen fuel at the core is exhausted, a star of at least 0.4 times the mass of the Sun[2] expands to become a red giant, fusing heavier elements at the core, or in shells around the core. It then evolves into a degenerate form, recycling a portion of the matter into the interstellar environment where it will form a new generation of stars with a higher proportion of heavy elements.[3]

Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more stars that are gravitationally bound, and generally move around each other in stable orbits. When two such stars have a relatively close orbit, their gravitational interaction can have a significant impact on their evolution.[4]

Answer 6

No. They are much bigger than planets and much farther away than all the planets visible with the naked eye from Earth. Our sun is an example of a star; other stars vary in mass but they are all more massive than any planet by their definition.

Answer 7

NO . Stars are suns far away . The nearest star is about 4 light years away . ( a light year being the distance light travels in one year) .

Answer 8

The stars are just like our sun, our sun is a medium sized star.

Answer 9

No they are not because stars are not round so therefore stars are not small planets. Stars are parts of an asteroid which contains light from our moon.

Answer 10

some are some are'nt.use a highpower telescope and some of the stars will appear as the planets they are.