Can stars travel around a planet and yet not be a moon?

Answer 1

Stars are suns.

Stars can revolve around each other, but there is a vast difference of scale between a star, a planet and a moon.

For instance the Sun, which is our star, is 1,300,000 the size of the Earth and 70,000,000 times the size of our moon.

The sun is 1000 times larger than all the planets, moons, comets, asteroids and meteoroids combined. They all orbit the sun.

The sun is a star and many of the stars you see in the sky are many times bigger than the sun.

They are also much further away than the planets in our system.

The very nearest star is about 10,000 times times as far away as our furthest planet Neptune.

Stars have been shown to have planets of their own, but this is new science. The stars are so far away that it is only in the last 20 years that astronomers have found planets orbiting some of them.

It is highly likely that most stars have planets.

Answer 2

Strictly speaking, when we say that a planet orbits a star, what's actually happening is that both the star and the planet are orbiting a point between them called the barycenter. The barycenter is basically the center of mass of the two objects: look at the link below for more info.

The reason we say that the planet orbits the star is because generally speaking the star is many times larger in diameter and many times more massive than the planet, so that the barycenter is within the star itself - but there is a tiny bit of gravitational pull on the star by the planet, so the star actually does "wobble" a bit in orbit.

In any event, the star remains a star, and not a moon.

Answer 3

A planet can't be more massive than a star, otherwise it would be a star too. It has to do with the way solar systems form. The most massive object is in the center. And all the heat from the colliding matter makes it turn into a star. The stuff that orbits around that hasn't fallen into the star is left over to form the planets.

There are, however, stars that orbit other stars. Consider our nearest neighbor star system, Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri.

Answer 4

Okay.. you're getting the lecture.

In the first moments of the Universe.. we aren't going to talk about what happened before that for now, way too confusing.. the only element was Hydrogen.

And as the years passed, the clouds of hydrogen floating around clumped togeather under the effects of gravity. The atoms pulling closer and closer, bumping into eachother and giving off a little heat and moving faster. The cloud would squeeze tighter and tighter and get hotter and hotter. The tighter it squeezed, the stronger it's gravity would be and the more hydrogen it would pull in.

After a long time, the clouds would be so dense and hot and the atoms would bounce around with so much force that eventualy they'd bump into eachother and stick. This is called nuclear fusion, the atoms fuse togeather and form Helium. When this happens, some small parts of the atom are converted into a lot of energy. The energy heats and speeds the already hot, fast atoms around it so they hit eachother harder and start fusing too. This process spreads until the center of the massive cloud, which is so hot now, it's not even gas anymore. It's called plasma. The center is undergoing a Thermonuclear Chain Reaction, the reaction pushes out and it finaly stops squeezing smaller because of gravity. It's found a ballance that will last for millions and millions of years.

This is how a star is born and this is what is happening at the center of the Sun. All the life on Earth is feeding off energy from the heat and light given off by this reaction in the Sun. Plants eat the light from the sun, animals eat the plants and we eat the animals.

But.. let's go back to the other star, our new one. Hundreds of millions of years pass and finaly, at the center where the energy is created, it finaly runs out of Hydrogen and gravity starts squeezing again. The core smashes down further, until the Helium (that's made by the Hydrogen when they fuse) starts fusing too. This keeps happening. Helium forming heavier atoms and those heavier atoms forming ones even heavier. Until finaly, there isn't enough gravity to create a heavier metal.

The star colapses under it's own gravity and much of it's layers are thrown out into space by the force of the colapse. This is called a Supernova and it is the brightest event in the known Universe. Shining brighter than all the rest of the Galaxy.

The heavier elements that were created in the stars dieing stages, Oxygen, Carbon, Iron, Nitrogen.. everything, scatter into space, waiting for a young star to pass through and be collected by it's gravity. To swirl around far on the cooler distant edges outside of the young star. They bump into eachother too, but they do not fuse.

They start clumping under gravity too, forming smaller balls of heavier materials than the star is made of. Over time, these balls get bigger and bigger, and suck more material in under their own gravity. They become planets and moons and asteroids and comets and all the beautiful things we see when we see pictures from space. The cloud finaly goes away and there's nothing left but balls of rock and gas spinning around in all the complicated and crazy patterns that eventualy happen.

I hope that helped. Feel free to eMail if you need more information.

Answer 5

Only stars I know that can do that are the movie stars in Hollywood - they travel around this planet and many do moon the normal person in the street.

Answer 6

what everyone said was right the suns (stars) can not revolve orbit around the planet because even if the a star was close to a planet the planet will revolve around the sun instead of the star revolving around the planet for the gravity that sun has is more greater thats why no

Answer 7

Firstly, no planet's gravitational pull would be great enough to create and orbit for a star. Secondly, a star is not a moon, it's two different things.

Answer 8

Stars cannot travel around planets because stars are always bigger than planets and the smaller mass always goes around the larger.

Answer 9

The orbit of a moon and a planet is not completely one sided.
If they were both same size it would be easy to see the orbits of them both.
When one is much larger than the other they still orbit each other but it is much harder to imagine.
A planet and a sun is the same thing.

Answer 10

Answers:

Nope.....and Nope.
Go back to square one.

Moons orbit around planets.
Planets orbit around Stars.

Our Sun is a Star.

In the Milky Way Galaxy there are at least 1,000 Billion Stars.
Each of those stars might have from 0 to 10 (or more) planets orbiting around them with their own associated moons. It is a really big place out there...bigger than most of us can begin to understand and deal with.

Now get this...
Besides our own Galaxy, there are millions of other galaxies out there beyond the limits of our Galaxy. And, those galaxies (small "g") have billions of stars within them also. So it is a really, really, really big place out there...