A Star Is Born: Short Story Of The First Few Million Years

A Star Is Born? 

By Maedeh Farhoush 

Stars are born in interstellar regions, clouds of gas and dust which are scattered in most galaxies. An example of such interstellar dust is the “Pillars of Creation” in the Eagle nebula which is documented by the Hubble Space Telescope. These clouds are stellar nurseries, a place where thousands of stars like our sun are begin born. 

In its first stage of creating a star is called a protostar. A protostar is created when the majority of the stellar material has collected together within the interstellar dust and has formed a ball with sufficient mass that the gas and dust can begin to collapse under their own gravitation. As the cloud begins to collapse, the centering material begins to heat up and temperature will rise to up to thousands of degrees. Likewise, the pressure at the center of a protostar is high. As a result of high pressure and temperature, a protostar emits infrared radiation being visible through infrared telescopes.
The material of a protostar is about 1/100 of the total material of a star. As the cloud collapses, the protostar becomes progressively heavier, until a dense, hot core is formed. Not all the material in the interstellar dust ends up in the star. The remaining dust can form planets, asteroids, comets or just remain as dust.

Once there’s no more material falling inward, all that’s left is a hot ball of gas. Astronomers call this stage a T-Tauri star. A T-Tauri star does not have enough internal temperature and pressure to begin nuclear fusion at its center, but it’s still a very hot object and can appear as bright as a regular star. Over the next 100 million years, gravity continues to collapse the T Tauri star until the temperature at its core reaches the point that nuclear fusion can begin.

After another few millions of years, nuclear continues at the center of the dense core, which prevents the collapse of material within the young star. The protostar is now a new star and will continue to shine for millions, billions, and even trillions of years.

Nuclear fusion is an atomic reaction that fuels stars.  Two or even three nuclei, the centers of atoms, combine together to make a larger one, making a whole new element. The result of this process is the release of a lot of energy that fuels the start. Stars are powered by nuclear fusion in their cores, particularly converting hydrogen into helium. 

The process of production of new elements via nuclear reactions is called nucleosynthesis. A star's mass determines the types of nucleosyntheses that occur in its core (or during explosive changes in its life cycle).

Luckily our sun is only a few billion years old and young enough to continue to give us life for the next few million years…