Dr. Len Kuhi's Amazing Star Stories
Our guest speaker for Thursday, August 22, 2019 was Dr. Len Kuhi, current president of the Cloverdale Rotary Club and former Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley and Minnesota. Len increased our club’s knowledge base about the Birth & Death of Stars (in my case from zero to somewhere greater than zero)! His presentation was focused on the life cycle of a star from pre-formation through White Dwarf or, sometimes, Black Hole.
Did you know that our Sun has about 5 billion years of life before it moves onto the next phase (Red Giant)? The Sun is at its half-way point right now.
Did you know that stars are formed out of gas and dust and that gravity pulls these particles and molecules together to form the star? Gravity pulls the star together and is its main energy source. Half of the gravity is used inside the star and half is sent outward. Young stars are seen as disks of dust and gas. At some point, nuclear reactions start and hydrogen is converted into helium. At the end of its life our sun is going to be converted into an apparently useless white dwarf about the size of the earth, with no nuclear reactions and very dense (poor sun).
Len also showed us some of the most amazing and colorful photos of different sequences of stars. I’m not sure how those photos were taken but some photographer was very intrepid!
Our thanks to Dr. Len for making us a bit more aware of what’s going on around us and keeping us aware that we are indeed very small creatures in a magnificent and amazingly huge process.
For a snapshot of billions of years ~~~
New techniques such as radiophotography provide clearer, color images of distant places. This one, called the Pillars of Creation is in the Eagle Nebula, taken by the Hubble telescope. Even clearer views are available now online. This area is just a mere 6500-7000 light years from earth.
