Blue Stars In Space

While blue giant stars have a surface temperature of at least 10 000 kelvin compared to say a yellow dwarf star like our sun at about 6 000k another type of star called blue supergiants class i are even more extreme with a surface temperature of between 10 000 50 000k and luminosities of 10 000 to a million times brighter than the sun.

Blue stars in space. Blue stars are stars that have at least 3 times the mass of the sun and up. In the standard hertzsprung russell diagram these stars lie above and to the right of the main sequence. This bluish white supergiant star lies about 139 light years from earth and is classified a type b star. Among the kaleidoscope of stars brilliant blue stars are of special interest.

In astronomy a blue giant is a hot star with a luminosity class of iii giant or ii bright giant. This star cluster is not only populated by young stars. Stars usually form in clusters like this one. But they re still everywhere as if recently created.

Stars planets galaxies clouds of dust and gas and other matter in space are sending out energy all the time. The more we learn about the universe the more we marvel at the extraordinary number and diversity of stars. Like waves traveling through the ocean they can be very long and lazy very short and peppy or anything in between. Of the roughly 10 000 stars visible to the naked eye only a few hundred have been given proper names in the history of astronomy.

The term applies to a variety of stars in different phases of development all evolved stars that have moved from the main sequence but have little else in common so blue giant simply refers to stars in a particular region of the hr diagram rather than a specific type of star. Traditional astronomy tends to group stars into constellations or asterisms and give proper names to those not to individual stars. They shine so brightly that they should burn up their fuel in just a few million years. Its name comes from the arabic term ākhir an nahr which means end of the river this is very appropriate since achernar is part of the constellation eridanus the river.

The primary star rigel a is a blue white supergiant that is 21 times more massive than our sun and shines with approximately 120 000 times the luminosity. Thus phecda a. The ninth brightest star night sky is achernar. Whether a star has 10 times the mass of the sun or 150 solar masses it s going to appear blue to our eyes.

Peering deep inside the hub of the neighboring andromeda galaxy nasa s hubble space telescope has uncovered a large rare population of hot bright stars. Rare ultra blue stars found in neighboring galaxy s hub. The image at left shows the nearby majestic andromeda galaxy. Many star names are in origin descriptive of the part of the constellation they are found in.