• Question: Are stars always there or do they get created?

    Asked by katnisseverdeen to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by lol4eva.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      They definitely get born and die. We can see this happening quite a lot.

      If you know where the constellation Orion is, if you look with a telescope at the sword that hangs down from his belt, that region is called the Orion nebula and is a region where new stars are being born.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Stars are born and die. Their life cycle depends on how massive they have and so how much fuel they have to burn. Ironically the more massive the shorter they live – that’s because they burn hotter and quicker (and by burn I mean fuse hydrogen!).

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Yeah stars are being born from clouds of gas condensing and igniting all the time. I think it’s amazing to think that right now, stars and new planets are being made out in Orion’s belt, where life could be getting started for the first time…

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 21 Mar 2012:

      Stars do die (explode or fade away) and they can be “born” too; our Sun was made from the left-overs of another star, much larger than it, which exploded and left many elements that make up the Earth.

      We use “star forming regions” in astronomy to work out how galaxies work in more detail; the earliest stars we’ve found are only a few tens of millions of years old, after the big bang, whilst the Sun started life about 9 billion years after the big bang.

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