Astronomy

The mass of a star is the single characteristic that determines that heavenly body's fate. Its end-of-life behavior depends entirely upon its mass. For lightweight stars, death comes quietly, a...

Stars, such as our sun, are giant balls of burning gas. Hydrogen serves as the bulk of the gas and fuses into helium at the core to produce the thermonuclear reaction that generates tremendous...

Neptune is a distant planet with 13 moons that is so far from the Sun that astronomers on Earth did not detect it until 1846. Neptune's size dwarfs the Earth, but life as we know it could not...

For a star, mass is destiny. A star's size determines whether its lifespan will be long or relatively short, its death quiet or explosive. This issue, abstract enough in the context of a faraway...

The sun's core, the innermost layer of the sun, is plasma, a type of gas that is sensitive to magnetism. The sun's energy is derived from its core. Fusion reactions that occur in the core release...

The fusion reaction and energy transfer of the sun take place in its interior. Despite its high density, the interior of the sun is plasma, able to flow and transmit energy. There are three layers...

Stars vary in size, density and luminosity. The mass of a star determines how long the star will exist and how hot its surface temperature will be during its lifetime. Low-mass stars make up the...

Stars are born from clouds of dust and gas in space. These clouds, called nebula, coalesce as a result of of the gravitational pull of the particles themselves as well as nova shock waves,...

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun. With a diameter 11 times that of Earth, it is also the largest planet in the solar system. It is the first of the system's "gas planets," bodies that lack...

Outer space has always fascinated you, so it's with much glee you want to create a solar system project. You can make a solar system project that is colorful, fun and represents all the planets...

The planet Mercury apparently has a core composed of molten iron, a discovery which left scientists puzzled as to how such a small planet remained hot enough to have a core that has not...