has anyone ever counted the stars?..how many are there? are they cold or hot? where do they go during the day? how long do they "live"? is there life on a star? how are they "born"?how big are they? these are questions my six year old ask me all the time it would be nice to give her an answer!
2007-03-12 04:25:27 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
No one has counted all the stars... we can't even see all of them. They are all hot. They are still there during the day; we just can't see them because the sky is too bright during the daytime. Stars do not "live", but they burn for billions of years. There is no life on stars; they are like our sun... very hot. There may be life on planets that orbit stars, but no one knows that for sure yet. Stars are formed from gasses and other matter that accumulates because of gravity. When the pressure gets very intense, nuclear fusion causes them to emit energy. Stars vary in size, but they are all bigger than the earth. Our sun is a star.
2007-03-12 04:43:48 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
When you go outside at night, you can see about 3,000 stars if it's dark. These are individual stars. If you can see the Milky Way (the plane of our galaxy), you can technically see about 200 billion stars, but they are far away and fuzzy. If you can see the Andromeda Galaxy, you are looking at another 400 billion stars on top of that.
Stars are hot. Very hot - between 3,000 and 70,000 degrees on the surface, up to 30 million in the center.
During the day, the Sun is so bright it blocks your view of the stars - but they are still there. You can see some during a solar eclipse when the Sun is blocked by the Moon.
Very massive stars live a few hundred million years. Smaller stars, like our Sun, can live over 10 billion years.
Life as we know if can't exist on stars - they are much too hot. Plus, they aren't solid bodies like the Earth - they are made out of plasma, which is a superheated gas.
Stars are 'born' in clouds of nebula, which are gas clouds in space, and they get massive enough to collapse into the center, and as they become more dense, they can start fusing hydrogen to helium in their cores and become actual stars (emitting light and fusing hydrogen).
Really really big! Millions of times larger than the Earth, and that's just our star, which is a pretty average size - they can get much larger.
2007-03-12 05:06:45 · answer #2 · answered by eri 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
noone knows how many stars... there are billions of them. they are hot. they are big balls of a gas fire. they are still there during the day you just cant see them because its light out there is a place called the star nebula where they are born. you dont know are long stars live..... sometimes they live for ever or just years. but if they go out we wouldnt know it right away because it takes 7 years for the light to travel so we would still see it for 7 years. when the star goes out it creates a black whole sorta like a vacuum in space. does this help?
2007-03-12 04:31:44 · answer #3 · answered by Nichole 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Sounds like a visit to a planetarium is what she would like.
But first, a visit to your local library, and talk to a librarian there.
2007-03-12 04:34:15 · answer #4 · answered by morningfoxnorth 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You could tell her stars are like symbols of people who once lived, kind of like when a person dies and their soul ascends, it is just a mark we leave in the universe, to let people know we were here and we are always looking down on them.
Or, you could have her research it on NASA's website, I am sure they have some places for kids research etc.
2007-03-12 04:30:12 · answer #5 · answered by Wolfgang92 4 · 0⤊ 4⤋
"...it would be nice to give her an answer!"
So what does this mean? Have you put her on hold until now?
2007-03-12 04:33:49 · answer #6 · answered by Oliver T4 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋