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Earth's sun is one among millions of stars. These stars
vary greatly in their age. Some are still very young while others are
nearly at the end of their lives. The sun is a middle aged star, being
about 5,000 million years old. Stars are
born in clusters inside a nebula. The gas in the nebula creates the
stars and when the stars die they create new nebulae from their gas. The
sun might have belonged to a cluster once, but it has drifted apart.
Many star clusters can be seen in the sky - the Pleiades are one good
example.
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Eventually, in about 5 billion years, our sun will
run out of fuel and begin to expand into a red giant. It will become so
hot that it will burn the Earth. After about 2 million years, the outer
layers of the red giant will blow away to create a nebula. What is left
will collapse and be a dead star, called a white dwarf.
Stars do not exist forever and ever.
written by Vildana |
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This is the Orion Nebula |
These are the Pleiades. |
Tis is the Eskimo or Clownface nebula. |
This is a ring nebula about 5,000 light
years away. |
This is a star cluster. |
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