Imagine that you are observing the light from a distant star that is located in a galaxy 100 million lightyears away from you. By analysis of the starlight received, you are able to tell that the image we see is of a 10- million-year-old star. You are also able to predict that the star will have a total lifetime of 50 million years, at which point it will end in a catastrophic supernova. a) How old does the star appear to be to us here on Earth now? b) How long will it be before we receive the light from the supernova event? c) Has the supernova already occurred? If so, when did it occur?
Stellar evolution
We may see thousands of stars in the dark sky. Our universe consists of billions of stars. Stars may appear tiny to us but they are huge balls of gasses. Sun is a star of average size. Some stars are even a thousand times larger than the sun. The stars do not exist forever they have a certain lifetime. The life span of the sun is about 10 billion years. The star undergoes various changes during its lifetime, this process is called stellar evolution. The structure of the sun-like star is shown below.
Red Shift
It is an astronomical phenomenon. In this phenomenon, increase in wavelength with corresponding decrease in photon energy and frequency of radiation of light. It is the displacement of spectrum of any kind of astronomical object to the longer wavelengths (red) side.
Trending now
This is a popular solution!
Step by step
Solved in 2 steps