The star is 25,000 light-years away from Earth. Despite this great distance, the star would be visible to the naked eye if it were not for all the dust between it and the Earth. UPDATE! As of January 2009, …

A star is a big ball of gas which gives off both heat and light. So where do stars come from? What happens to them as they grow older? A galaxy contains clouds of dust and gas, as well as stars. It is …

The Sun is our closest star. It is a member of the Milky Way galaxy. The Sun is a yellow dwarf star, which means it is a medium size star. It is believed to be over 4 billion years old. The Sun spins …

StarChild Question of the Month for January 2002 Question: Do stars last forever? Answer: No. Stars are born, live, and die. This process is called the "life cycle of a star". Most of the time a star shines, …

Question: What is a brown dwarf? Answer: In order to understand what is a brown dwarf, we need to understand the difference between a star and a planet. It is not easy to tell a star from a planet when …

The star outside of our solar system that is closest to Earth is Alpha Centauri C. It is 40,000,000,000,000 (40 trillion) km away. How many light years is that? 4.21 light years If we hopped aboard our jet, how …

So it was very early in the time after the Big Bang explosion that stars formed. Observations reveal that tiny clumps of matter formed in the baby universe; to WMAP, these clumps are seen as tiny …

No one knows just how big the Universe is. Astronomers try to measure it all the time. They use a special instrument called a spectroscope to tell whether an object is moving away from Earth or …

BASALT A dark, fine-grained volcanic rock. BIG BANG THEORY A theory which states that the Universe began to expand after a super powerful explosion of concentrated matter and energy. …

A star's energy comes from combining light elements into heavier elements in a process known as fusion, or "nuclear burning". It is generally believed that most of the elements in the universe heavier …