Amazing heavenly bodies: incredible giants and stars that are smaller in size than the Sun

Even at the dawn of human existence, ancient people turned their eyes to the night sky. Astronomers of the first civilizations tried to count the stars, which then seemed to them eternally fixed points of the firmament. With the passage of time, natural science developed, ideas about the surrounding world and astronomy. However, interest in celestial bodies only increased.

Amazing Stars

In modern times it was discovered that all these stars, which are smaller than the Sun or larger than it, are bodies similar to our luminary. But even after centuries of research, they still have not revealed to mankind all their secrets. In modern astronomy and astrophysics, literally every few years, sensational discoveries are made. They suddenly ask scientists amazing puzzles or completely change our ideas about the nature of things. Stars that are smaller in size than the Sun suddenly shine thousands of times brighter than it, for thousands of years the observed points on the celestial vault turn out to be a whole system of several stars and so on. Such a bunch of stars is the closest to us Alpha Centauri system, where three glowing bodies rotate around the common center of mass .

The largest star of this system of Centaurus A is somewhat larger than our native star, while the other two stars are smaller in size than the Sun. In the text below, we take a closer look at some of these amazing objects of our universe.

Stars that are larger than the Sun in size

In our Galaxy, there are many such bodies: giant stars, sub -giants , supergiants, hyper-giants. So, for example, the masses of blue supergiants can exceed the solar supernova by a factor of 10-20. This means that in size they can be more than our luminary hundreds of times and shine thousands of times brighter. Their blue color indicates monstrous temperatures. Such, for example, the star Rigel - the brightest body in the constellation of Orion. But even these dimensions and luminosity fade in comparison with really gigantic objects. The largest stars in our universe are the so-called hypergigants. A typical representative of this class will be several times more massive than even giant Rigel, and 200-250 times more massive than our Sun. However, such objects are quite rare in the universe. It is interesting that their life is quite short by stellar standards. They incredibly brightly shine, sometimes eclipsing whole galaxies, but quickly expend their fuel materials.

Stars that are smaller in size than the Sun

Longer live small stars, which economically and slowly exhaust their potential. Stars that are smaller than the Sun, as a rule, are also duller. This breed includes numerous dwarfs: orange, red, brown, white. By the way, our luminary is also a yellow dwarf. Star Epsilon in the constellation Eridan also belongs to the class of yellow dwarfs, but its mass is slightly less than solar - 85%, and luminosity is only 28% in comparison with the brightness of our luminary. The so-called brown dwarfs possess surprising properties. Their mass, as a rule, is from 1 to 7% of the solar mass. Thus, in this respect, they even come close to planets like our Jupiter. Actually, brown dwarfs can not be called full-fledged luminaries. Astrophysicists often characterize them as failed stars. Of course, their luminosity and temperature are also hundreds of times smaller than the solar one. To date, the coldest of the known brown dwarfs has a surface temperature of only 25 degrees C. It is interesting that some stars that are smaller than the Sun at the same time may have more than its mass. We are talking about the so-called neutron stars. They are the final products of the evolution of stars. What remains of the luminary after the supernova explosion. The radius of the pulsars (as they are still called) is usually compressed to 10-20 kilometers in diameter. A negligible distance, comparable with not the largest asteroid. But in this case, neutron stars are incredibly condensed bodies with a mass equal to 1.5 solar. A handful of substance taken from a body of such an incredible plane will weigh thousands of tons.