Spica- a stars life
The constellation Virgo.
As stated before Spica is a double star, which means that it is two stars that orbit around each other. Spica is approximately 250 light years away (16580177.13 astronomical units). The star is one hundred times brighter than our own sun, it is the 16th brightest star in the beautiful night sky. You can see this star through the months of April and July, during the month of October the Sun and Spica line up giving the illusion that Spica has disappeared or is invisible. When the star begins to die it will expand and become a black hole, Spica is not expanding right not because it still produces nuclear fusion. Inside Spica's core nuclear fusion is happening, right now as you're reading this paragraph. The energy movement, keeps the star alive.
This is how nuclear fusion occurs, a star has large amounts of gravity and pulls in gases from the star into its core. As gases are being pulled into the core, energy is being produced and is being pushed out. This constant pushing and pulling is what balances out our star and keeps it balanced.
Why do are we able to see the light that a star produces? It is all thanks to gravity that we can see these wonders in the night sky. As the gravitated gases are pulled deeper into the sun the pressure is increases and the gas becomes denser and things get hotter. When things get hot the atoms start moving faster and get to the point where they are moving so fast they fuse together (A.K.A Nuclear Fusion.) The fusion turns hydrogen atoms into helium atoms which burns rapidly creating energy that moves towards the surface of the star and the hot gas sells move towards the surface of the sun and start to float through the low temperature ranges of the stars outer layer and past it making the star visible in the night sky.
Click here to learn more about nuclear fusion and a stars main sequence.
This is how nuclear fusion occurs, a star has large amounts of gravity and pulls in gases from the star into its core. As gases are being pulled into the core, energy is being produced and is being pushed out. This constant pushing and pulling is what balances out our star and keeps it balanced.
Why do are we able to see the light that a star produces? It is all thanks to gravity that we can see these wonders in the night sky. As the gravitated gases are pulled deeper into the sun the pressure is increases and the gas becomes denser and things get hotter. When things get hot the atoms start moving faster and get to the point where they are moving so fast they fuse together (A.K.A Nuclear Fusion.) The fusion turns hydrogen atoms into helium atoms which burns rapidly creating energy that moves towards the surface of the star and the hot gas sells move towards the surface of the sun and start to float through the low temperature ranges of the stars outer layer and past it making the star visible in the night sky.
Click here to learn more about nuclear fusion and a stars main sequence.
An HR Diagram show a stars heat, luminosity and spectral class. As you can see Spica A has a much higher luminosity than Spica B and is also hotter. Spica A is a B1 spectral class star. Spica B is a B4 spectral class star this means it is not as hot as Spica A but is almost as hot.
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